A Better Fit - Chapter One
Title: A Better Fit
Author: Pic Akai
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sherlock/Cabin Pressure
Summary: Martin Crieff and Sherlock Holmes discover they were swapped as babies. (Cracky premise treated seriously.)
Word count: ~14,500
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the people, characters, situations etc in these works of fiction, except for the ones I have created. They are written for entertainment purposes and no infringement or specific comment on any person is intended.
Status: Finished.
Notes: This is actually something I wrote in a few days half a year ago. I decided to get it betaed as an experiment (I haven't ever used a beta before, in eleven years of fic writing) but after the first chapter came through both my beta and I stopped responding to each other (due, I'm pretty sure, to lack of time on both sides) and it's been sitting on my hard drive ever since. I decided to post it now and just go for it like I do the rest of my work. The first chapter does have some minor amendments which you may thank oleandraceae for, though I chose to ignore some of her suggestions too and you'll never know which bits were which!
Those of you who don't like WIPs may note that this is long completed and I plan to post the chapters regularly.
Martin Crieff woke up one afternoon in mid-February, still tired from the previous few days' flying though he had slept for ten hours since he'd arrived home. He made his way slowly down two flights of stairs, heading for the kitchen, thankful that the students he lived with had been quiet this morning. He passed the table at the bottom of the stairs where the post was put by common consent, and picked up the two letters that were there.
As he waited for the kettle to boil, he opened the first letter. He guessed - and was proved correct - that it was a bank statement, sent to remind him how much money he didn't have. He turned his attention to the second letter, which was when he became abruptly very awake.
The envelope was addressed in unfamiliar handwriting, and gave no clues away as to its contents. The letter itself, however, though clearly a photocopy, was written in his mum's handwriting.
Martin's mum had been dead for three weeks. Three and a half now, he thought to himself, staring at the familiar spiky letters but not making any sense out of them yet. They had had the funeral two weeks ago. He hadn't yet started to adjust to the knowledge that she was gone, but he'd begun to be able to function again without someone pushing him around and telling him what to do.
That was, until the letter appeared.
Her death itself had been an accident, a freak fall down some steep steps at work which led to a cerebral haemorrhage. She'd been doing a night shift at the hospital and it might have been the best place to be found, if it were in time, but she was dead by the time someone came across her.
Did the letter mean she'd planned it? Was it a suicide, and this her note? Martin felt sick, and the hand which held the letter began to shake slightly. But how could someone plan falling down steps? You'd never know whether it would leave you with a broken leg, paralysis, a coma or otherwise. If she'd wanted to commit suicide there were loads of easier ways to do it, and being a nurse, she'd seen most of the attempted methods before.
Maybe she wanted to make it look like an accident, though. But surely there had to be easier ways than taking the risk. Maybe - he let himself wonder about every possibility, because all of it was crazy - the letter meant she wasn't actually dead. She'd faked it somehow. He knew Simon had gone to see her body to confirm it was her, and Caitlin had looked in when she'd been done up by the coroner - Martin hadn't wanted to - but maybe they were in on it, too.
It was stupid to give himself false hope, though. It must be something else, some really badly timed mishap with the post office. She'd probably sent it two months ago, passing on a ten pound note from his aunt who still sent a card at Christmas every year with a tenner for each of the children, despite the fact that they were all in their thirties now and none of them had been living at home for a decade or so. The sort of luck which meant the letter would turn up now, just after mum had died, that was Martin's sort.
He realised he was going to have to read the letter to make any sense out of it, and slowly held it up again, balancing his shaking hand on his knee.
19/05/07
Dear boys,
I am writing to two of you here, though I'll send you separate copies. I don't know when you will receive this; as I write I'm in good health, but I'll be instructing my solicitor to send these to you upon my death. Hopefully, Martin, you will already know about my death by the time this letter arrives. Sherlock, I doubt you will, and you'll probably be quite confused about why the death of a stranger should affect you, but please read on and things will become clear.
Before I continue, I should clarify that this letter is written to both Martin Crieff and Sherlock Holmes.
I have to make a difficult confession to both of you. The only reason it comes now is because before her death, Mrs Melliflua Holmes and I agreed that we would tell you the truth once we had all passed away - I mean, all of your parents. At the time of writing, my husband Trevor Crieff has recently died, so I am the only person left who can give you the details of this story.
I'm aware that this is going to come as quite a shock, and I apologise for that. We kept it a secret because it can't affect you if you don't know, but as there are some circumstances where the information might become necessary later - medical reasons or that sort of thing - we felt we had to give it to you eventually.
Both of you were born in the summer of 1976, a few days apart. Martin was born three days before Sherlock. At the time, both our family - the Crieffs, who at the time were myself, Trevor and Simon - and the Holmes family - Melliflua, Samuel and Mycroft - lived in Leversham, a small village in Suffolk. Martin won't remember the village as we moved while he was still quite young, but I'm not sure about Sherlock. It was the type of place where everybody knew everybody else's business, whether they wanted to or not.
Our families only made contact as Trevor did some electrical work for the Holmes family, when both of you were about five months old. He noticed their baby, Sherlock, and mentioned his own son was about the same age. He and Melliflua spoke a lot about the babies while he worked.
For our own family, our new child was of course much loved, but quite difficult to understand, after our experience with Simon. He was often very agitated and unhappy with his surroundings. He was very alert for a child of his age from almost the first day, and didn't sleep nearly as much as most babies did. If he was paid attention he would usually fuss less, but he seemed to need constant stimulation, otherwise he would be very upset. He also developed abnormally quickly, holding his own head up, sitting unaided and beginning to crawl much earlier than normal.
I don't have as much detail about the Holmeses's new baby, but from what I remember the family were concerned that he was developing slowly, though he was still within the normal range. He slept as often as most babies, but could often be fussy when he was awake if too much was going on or there were too many people around.
You have to understand that it was a huge struggle for both of us. Both families loved our new sons, but you were difficult for us to adjust to. That was only highlighted more when we recognised that Martin was more like the baby the Holmeses had been expecting, and Sherlock was more like the baby we were expecting.
There is no easy way for me to tell you this, so I'll get it over with. When you were six months old, we swapped you. I know this sounds like the plot of a ridiculous film, but that is what happened. It wasn't an easy decision and it wasn't made lightly. Trevor had been speaking to me about the conversations he had been having with Melliflua while working, and she had been talking to Samuel as well. The four of us met up, along with you two, for the first time about a week after the job ended.
It just seemed so much better this way. I know you will probably be angry with us, and hurt, but you have to remember that none of us did this with bad motivations. We wanted to give both of you the best chance to succeed in life, and you fit much better in the opposite families to which you were born. We obviously don't know how different things would have been if you had stayed with your biological parents, but we believed - and I still do - that things were easier this way.
We didn't make any obvious legal changes, no adoptions. We just swapped you two over. We met up one last time as a group and myself and Trevor went home with the baby that had been Sherlock, and Melliflua and Samuel went home with the baby that had been Martin. Samuel managed to get some records altered through a friend, under the radar, so that there wouldn't be any strange medical differences later like blood types suddenly changing. So technically, Martin, you were for the first six months of your life Sherlock Edmund Holmes, and Sherlock, for the first six months of your life you were Martin George Crieff.
But you are just as much part of your families as you were before you read this, and speaking for myself, I still love both of you, even if I only really know one of you. I hope you won't take this too hard.
With love,
Amy Crieff
When he reached the end, Martin turned the last page over, to see if there was more. When it was clear there wasn't, he read the letter through again, as if it would make any more sense a second time.
The sickness hadn't eased. He knew now that his mum was definitely dead. Realistically he'd known she couldn't be alive, but the stupid naïve part of him had woken up at the possibility, and it died down again once that was taken away. He also knew that she hadn't planned a suicide, which was, in a way, comforting.
He was left with nothing new to process about her death and the way it had happened, but with something entirely different to process about himself.
It was several hours before he managed to make the tea.
* * * * *
Simon Crieff was not, as a rule, a man who liked surprises.
He liked them even less when they came in the form of his younger brother, arriving at the garage Simon owned with a face like a smacked arse and walking like he had truly convinced himself that this time, this time, he would be able to take Simon on and win.
He'd seen Martin more times in the past month than he had in the past few years, and the prolonged exposure hadn't made any difference to their relationship. Martin was still as awkward as he'd ever been, and Simon could honestly say he was just as impatient about that as ever. He did love the irritating little brat, but still… He braced himself, standing back from the Camry he'd been inspecting and wiping his hands on a cloth out of habit, though there wasn't actually anything on them at the moment.
"Martin?" he greeted his brother.
"How dare you?" Martin hissed at him, which put Simon on the back foot a little as he didn't actually know what it was he had dared to do. "How could you, Simon?"
He recognised the characteristic hitch in Martin's voice which meant he was about to start half-crying in anger, and there was no way he wanted to have this scene out in front of his employees - who'd already registered the fact that there was something a bit more interesting going on than replacing oil filters - so he headed quickly for his office, knowing that Martin would follow.
He shut the door behind his brother just as he started to speak again. "This is just sick, Simon, really sick."
He paused, either to catch his breath or to gather up some more righteous indignation, and that was when Simon noticed the letter in his hand, so he snatched it from him. Martin made a stupid-sounding squeak and an abortive move to take it back off him, but then let his hand drift back to his side.
Simon scanned the first few lines with first raised eyebrows, then drawn ones. "Is this what you're on about?" he said, looking back up at his brother.
"You know it is," Martin fumed. He'd pulled himself together a bit, so it looked like the crying was off the table for now. "You sent it."
"Fuck off," Simon said with little heat, ignoring as he always did how uncomfortable Martin got at his casual swearing. "Why would I send you this? It doesn't even make any sense." He looked back at the letter, reading further. "Who are these people she's talking about? Is this actually from mum?"
Martin drew back a bit, the hand which had been a tight fist uncurling. "It's her handwriting," he said. "You really don't recognise it?"
"I've never read this before in my life," Simon said, going back to the letter. Martin stayed quiet as he finished reading it.
When he had, he looked up, dimly aware that the look on his face probably made him look like a total idiot. "Where's this from?"
"I received it yesterday in the post," Martin said. He took another step back, bumped into the desk, then leant awkwardly against it. "I - I assumed you'd sent it."
Simon frowned at him. "She died three weeks ago. Even if I were bothered about sending you stupid fake letters with ridiculous things in them, I wouldn't be doing it now, like this."
Martin nodded slowly. "Sorry," he said, back to his usual meek self. "I just couldn't see any other explanation for it."
He was like that, Martin. He'd convince himself about something and then go at it hammer and tongs, right up until the point when he was proved wrong and he deflated like an untied balloon. The single-mindedness would be a useful characteristic if he wasn't so good at reading things wrongly.
"So…do you think it's true?" Simon asked, skimming back over the letter. It was definitely mum's handwriting, and the date made sense for when she'd written it. That of course could have been made up afterwards, but he couldn't see a point to it. He thought about it, the logistics of the idea. Swapping babies over. It was mad, but then, so was mum. So she had been.
Martin was very quiet now. "I don't know what to think," he said. "You don't know anything about it?"
Simon thought back to see if he could recall overhearing anything, something that didn't fit. It all seemed normal, like Martin had always been a part of his life and just the way he was. Except…he frowned. One of his earliest memories, if not the earliest. He would have been about three, he thought. Going into the baby's room - as it was called up until Caitlin reached about five and declared she wasn't a baby any more - and seeing Martin in the cot. His mum had said something about his hair being brighter, and Simon had asked how it had changed colour.
He didn't remember her response, nor any more than that, but it was in the right time frame. In context with the letter it was a bit disturbing, and maybe it explained why it had stayed with him, despite seeming pretty ordinary up till now.
He recounted it to Martin, and then the two of them stood in silence for several minutes. When Simon remembered to look up again, Martin was paler than usual and digging his fingernails into his palm. Simon took a quick intake of breath; it startled Martin, who stumbled a bit despite the fact that he was leaning against the desk.
"I think…I think I'll go," Martin said, moving unsteadily towards the door. Simon didn't have anything useful to say, so he let him go and got back to work, telling the first bloke that made a joke about the expression on his brother's face to shut the fuck up.
* * * * *
Sherlock Holmes was beginning to become irritated. It had been several days since anything remotely interesting had happened. Even when he'd tried to engineer an interesting incident by bringing a hawk to Scotland Yard and trying to get it to fly around the main office, Lestrade had just opened his door and yelled at everyone to get out until Sherlock was finished with his attention seeking. Nobody had complained at being told to go and hang around in the corridor and the hawk had soon got bored with the place, preferring instead to try to nip at Sherlock's ear.
This lack of interesting incidents meant that, contrarily, he was getting even less inclined to do anything to find something which might occupy him. When the post arrived he ignored it, up until the point when John started nagging at him about it.
"That one's handwritten," John said, gesturing vaguely to the small pile on the table. Sherlock continued to stare at the ceiling. "Could be a case."
"Of course it could," Sherlock said, deciding to save the energy it would take to roll his eyes. He could use that energy later for thinking up a better diversion than a hawk. Perhaps a land animal. A goat was too easily herded…a yak? No, it had to be something he could get past the front desk without being stopped. Maybe several somethings…
"So, it could be an interesting case. You're bored, might as well see if it's worthwhile."
"The ones that write are rarely worthwhile," Sherlock snapped. "It's all women over fifty who say they want to know if their husband is cheating on them when a five year old could correctly interpret the signs; what they actually want is for me to lie to them and say no, of course, he loves you just as much as he did the day you married. Or they've lost some important piece of jewellery and it turns out to have been stolen - by the sink." Even as he spoke he ripped open the letter, because doing so would shut John up about it and then maybe Sherlock could use him as a better sounding board for the ideas about which animals to use. Bees sounded like a nice idea, but carrying the hive would be problematic, to say the least…
He scanned the first paragraph of the letter, stopping at the point where its author told him he would be confused. "As I thought, written by an imbecile," he said, and dropped it.
John looked at the letter. "Husband cheating or lost jewellery?"
"A dead stranger," Sherlock told him, rubbing the palms of his hands at his temples. "What is the largest animal you could conceivably conceal under your clothing?"
"Probably a rabbit, or a small dog," John replied without much thought. His lack of imagination was endlessly frustrating. "Can I read it?"
Sherlock waved a hand magnanimously at him and considered ferrets.
A few minutes later, John spoke, and Sherlock was pulled momentarily from his thoughts by the curious tone in his voice. "Sherlock, I think you'd better read this."
"They're never as interesting as they seem, John," he huffed, but John shook his head.
"No, I think this one might be. It's not actually from a client, anyway. It's about you. Supposedly."
"A fan letter, then. Dull."
"Nope…not that either." Sherlock hoped he was going to shut up soon. "I'll just read it to you, shall I?" The hope was clearly in vain.
John read the letter, and Sherlock paid attention only because otherwise, John would read it again. He became actively interested in it only at the point when mummy's name was mentioned. When he'd finished reading, John remained blessedly quiet for several minutes.
"Sherlock?" he eventually spoke. "What are you thinking?"
"I am thinking a great number of things," Sherlock replied. His thoughts about the right animal had been shifted to the back burner for the time being, but they were still there. Higher in the processing order was the idea that he had been a member of a different family at the beginning of his life.
He held out a hand for the letter, and John passed it over. He couldn't deduce much from it, as it was a photocopy, but the handwriting itself at least confirmed that it had been written by a woman in her late fifties or early sixties. He picked up the envelope; it had been posted outside of London. The letter had been copied several years before the envelope was addressed, so the date could easily be true.
Whether the story within the letter could be true, however, was something else altogether.
"Do you think it's true?" John asked him after another pause.
Sherlock moved to standing from his reclined position in one fluid movement. "I haven't decided," he said, and reached for his coat. "Mind the mouse; it's next to the salad." He left as quickly as he could, but heard John's sigh on his way down the stairs.
Continue to next chapter
Pic
This entry was originally posted at http://ficofpic.dreamwidth.org/50530.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Author: Pic Akai
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sherlock/Cabin Pressure
Summary: Martin Crieff and Sherlock Holmes discover they were swapped as babies. (Cracky premise treated seriously.)
Word count: ~14,500
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the people, characters, situations etc in these works of fiction, except for the ones I have created. They are written for entertainment purposes and no infringement or specific comment on any person is intended.
Status: Finished.
Notes: This is actually something I wrote in a few days half a year ago. I decided to get it betaed as an experiment (I haven't ever used a beta before, in eleven years of fic writing) but after the first chapter came through both my beta and I stopped responding to each other (due, I'm pretty sure, to lack of time on both sides) and it's been sitting on my hard drive ever since. I decided to post it now and just go for it like I do the rest of my work. The first chapter does have some minor amendments which you may thank oleandraceae for, though I chose to ignore some of her suggestions too and you'll never know which bits were which!
Those of you who don't like WIPs may note that this is long completed and I plan to post the chapters regularly.
Martin Crieff woke up one afternoon in mid-February, still tired from the previous few days' flying though he had slept for ten hours since he'd arrived home. He made his way slowly down two flights of stairs, heading for the kitchen, thankful that the students he lived with had been quiet this morning. He passed the table at the bottom of the stairs where the post was put by common consent, and picked up the two letters that were there.
As he waited for the kettle to boil, he opened the first letter. He guessed - and was proved correct - that it was a bank statement, sent to remind him how much money he didn't have. He turned his attention to the second letter, which was when he became abruptly very awake.
The envelope was addressed in unfamiliar handwriting, and gave no clues away as to its contents. The letter itself, however, though clearly a photocopy, was written in his mum's handwriting.
Martin's mum had been dead for three weeks. Three and a half now, he thought to himself, staring at the familiar spiky letters but not making any sense out of them yet. They had had the funeral two weeks ago. He hadn't yet started to adjust to the knowledge that she was gone, but he'd begun to be able to function again without someone pushing him around and telling him what to do.
That was, until the letter appeared.
Her death itself had been an accident, a freak fall down some steep steps at work which led to a cerebral haemorrhage. She'd been doing a night shift at the hospital and it might have been the best place to be found, if it were in time, but she was dead by the time someone came across her.
Did the letter mean she'd planned it? Was it a suicide, and this her note? Martin felt sick, and the hand which held the letter began to shake slightly. But how could someone plan falling down steps? You'd never know whether it would leave you with a broken leg, paralysis, a coma or otherwise. If she'd wanted to commit suicide there were loads of easier ways to do it, and being a nurse, she'd seen most of the attempted methods before.
Maybe she wanted to make it look like an accident, though. But surely there had to be easier ways than taking the risk. Maybe - he let himself wonder about every possibility, because all of it was crazy - the letter meant she wasn't actually dead. She'd faked it somehow. He knew Simon had gone to see her body to confirm it was her, and Caitlin had looked in when she'd been done up by the coroner - Martin hadn't wanted to - but maybe they were in on it, too.
It was stupid to give himself false hope, though. It must be something else, some really badly timed mishap with the post office. She'd probably sent it two months ago, passing on a ten pound note from his aunt who still sent a card at Christmas every year with a tenner for each of the children, despite the fact that they were all in their thirties now and none of them had been living at home for a decade or so. The sort of luck which meant the letter would turn up now, just after mum had died, that was Martin's sort.
He realised he was going to have to read the letter to make any sense out of it, and slowly held it up again, balancing his shaking hand on his knee.
19/05/07
Dear boys,
I am writing to two of you here, though I'll send you separate copies. I don't know when you will receive this; as I write I'm in good health, but I'll be instructing my solicitor to send these to you upon my death. Hopefully, Martin, you will already know about my death by the time this letter arrives. Sherlock, I doubt you will, and you'll probably be quite confused about why the death of a stranger should affect you, but please read on and things will become clear.
Before I continue, I should clarify that this letter is written to both Martin Crieff and Sherlock Holmes.
I have to make a difficult confession to both of you. The only reason it comes now is because before her death, Mrs Melliflua Holmes and I agreed that we would tell you the truth once we had all passed away - I mean, all of your parents. At the time of writing, my husband Trevor Crieff has recently died, so I am the only person left who can give you the details of this story.
I'm aware that this is going to come as quite a shock, and I apologise for that. We kept it a secret because it can't affect you if you don't know, but as there are some circumstances where the information might become necessary later - medical reasons or that sort of thing - we felt we had to give it to you eventually.
Both of you were born in the summer of 1976, a few days apart. Martin was born three days before Sherlock. At the time, both our family - the Crieffs, who at the time were myself, Trevor and Simon - and the Holmes family - Melliflua, Samuel and Mycroft - lived in Leversham, a small village in Suffolk. Martin won't remember the village as we moved while he was still quite young, but I'm not sure about Sherlock. It was the type of place where everybody knew everybody else's business, whether they wanted to or not.
Our families only made contact as Trevor did some electrical work for the Holmes family, when both of you were about five months old. He noticed their baby, Sherlock, and mentioned his own son was about the same age. He and Melliflua spoke a lot about the babies while he worked.
For our own family, our new child was of course much loved, but quite difficult to understand, after our experience with Simon. He was often very agitated and unhappy with his surroundings. He was very alert for a child of his age from almost the first day, and didn't sleep nearly as much as most babies did. If he was paid attention he would usually fuss less, but he seemed to need constant stimulation, otherwise he would be very upset. He also developed abnormally quickly, holding his own head up, sitting unaided and beginning to crawl much earlier than normal.
I don't have as much detail about the Holmeses's new baby, but from what I remember the family were concerned that he was developing slowly, though he was still within the normal range. He slept as often as most babies, but could often be fussy when he was awake if too much was going on or there were too many people around.
You have to understand that it was a huge struggle for both of us. Both families loved our new sons, but you were difficult for us to adjust to. That was only highlighted more when we recognised that Martin was more like the baby the Holmeses had been expecting, and Sherlock was more like the baby we were expecting.
There is no easy way for me to tell you this, so I'll get it over with. When you were six months old, we swapped you. I know this sounds like the plot of a ridiculous film, but that is what happened. It wasn't an easy decision and it wasn't made lightly. Trevor had been speaking to me about the conversations he had been having with Melliflua while working, and she had been talking to Samuel as well. The four of us met up, along with you two, for the first time about a week after the job ended.
It just seemed so much better this way. I know you will probably be angry with us, and hurt, but you have to remember that none of us did this with bad motivations. We wanted to give both of you the best chance to succeed in life, and you fit much better in the opposite families to which you were born. We obviously don't know how different things would have been if you had stayed with your biological parents, but we believed - and I still do - that things were easier this way.
We didn't make any obvious legal changes, no adoptions. We just swapped you two over. We met up one last time as a group and myself and Trevor went home with the baby that had been Sherlock, and Melliflua and Samuel went home with the baby that had been Martin. Samuel managed to get some records altered through a friend, under the radar, so that there wouldn't be any strange medical differences later like blood types suddenly changing. So technically, Martin, you were for the first six months of your life Sherlock Edmund Holmes, and Sherlock, for the first six months of your life you were Martin George Crieff.
But you are just as much part of your families as you were before you read this, and speaking for myself, I still love both of you, even if I only really know one of you. I hope you won't take this too hard.
With love,
Amy Crieff
When he reached the end, Martin turned the last page over, to see if there was more. When it was clear there wasn't, he read the letter through again, as if it would make any more sense a second time.
The sickness hadn't eased. He knew now that his mum was definitely dead. Realistically he'd known she couldn't be alive, but the stupid naïve part of him had woken up at the possibility, and it died down again once that was taken away. He also knew that she hadn't planned a suicide, which was, in a way, comforting.
He was left with nothing new to process about her death and the way it had happened, but with something entirely different to process about himself.
It was several hours before he managed to make the tea.
* * * * *
Simon Crieff was not, as a rule, a man who liked surprises.
He liked them even less when they came in the form of his younger brother, arriving at the garage Simon owned with a face like a smacked arse and walking like he had truly convinced himself that this time, this time, he would be able to take Simon on and win.
He'd seen Martin more times in the past month than he had in the past few years, and the prolonged exposure hadn't made any difference to their relationship. Martin was still as awkward as he'd ever been, and Simon could honestly say he was just as impatient about that as ever. He did love the irritating little brat, but still… He braced himself, standing back from the Camry he'd been inspecting and wiping his hands on a cloth out of habit, though there wasn't actually anything on them at the moment.
"Martin?" he greeted his brother.
"How dare you?" Martin hissed at him, which put Simon on the back foot a little as he didn't actually know what it was he had dared to do. "How could you, Simon?"
He recognised the characteristic hitch in Martin's voice which meant he was about to start half-crying in anger, and there was no way he wanted to have this scene out in front of his employees - who'd already registered the fact that there was something a bit more interesting going on than replacing oil filters - so he headed quickly for his office, knowing that Martin would follow.
He shut the door behind his brother just as he started to speak again. "This is just sick, Simon, really sick."
He paused, either to catch his breath or to gather up some more righteous indignation, and that was when Simon noticed the letter in his hand, so he snatched it from him. Martin made a stupid-sounding squeak and an abortive move to take it back off him, but then let his hand drift back to his side.
Simon scanned the first few lines with first raised eyebrows, then drawn ones. "Is this what you're on about?" he said, looking back up at his brother.
"You know it is," Martin fumed. He'd pulled himself together a bit, so it looked like the crying was off the table for now. "You sent it."
"Fuck off," Simon said with little heat, ignoring as he always did how uncomfortable Martin got at his casual swearing. "Why would I send you this? It doesn't even make any sense." He looked back at the letter, reading further. "Who are these people she's talking about? Is this actually from mum?"
Martin drew back a bit, the hand which had been a tight fist uncurling. "It's her handwriting," he said. "You really don't recognise it?"
"I've never read this before in my life," Simon said, going back to the letter. Martin stayed quiet as he finished reading it.
When he had, he looked up, dimly aware that the look on his face probably made him look like a total idiot. "Where's this from?"
"I received it yesterday in the post," Martin said. He took another step back, bumped into the desk, then leant awkwardly against it. "I - I assumed you'd sent it."
Simon frowned at him. "She died three weeks ago. Even if I were bothered about sending you stupid fake letters with ridiculous things in them, I wouldn't be doing it now, like this."
Martin nodded slowly. "Sorry," he said, back to his usual meek self. "I just couldn't see any other explanation for it."
He was like that, Martin. He'd convince himself about something and then go at it hammer and tongs, right up until the point when he was proved wrong and he deflated like an untied balloon. The single-mindedness would be a useful characteristic if he wasn't so good at reading things wrongly.
"So…do you think it's true?" Simon asked, skimming back over the letter. It was definitely mum's handwriting, and the date made sense for when she'd written it. That of course could have been made up afterwards, but he couldn't see a point to it. He thought about it, the logistics of the idea. Swapping babies over. It was mad, but then, so was mum. So she had been.
Martin was very quiet now. "I don't know what to think," he said. "You don't know anything about it?"
Simon thought back to see if he could recall overhearing anything, something that didn't fit. It all seemed normal, like Martin had always been a part of his life and just the way he was. Except…he frowned. One of his earliest memories, if not the earliest. He would have been about three, he thought. Going into the baby's room - as it was called up until Caitlin reached about five and declared she wasn't a baby any more - and seeing Martin in the cot. His mum had said something about his hair being brighter, and Simon had asked how it had changed colour.
He didn't remember her response, nor any more than that, but it was in the right time frame. In context with the letter it was a bit disturbing, and maybe it explained why it had stayed with him, despite seeming pretty ordinary up till now.
He recounted it to Martin, and then the two of them stood in silence for several minutes. When Simon remembered to look up again, Martin was paler than usual and digging his fingernails into his palm. Simon took a quick intake of breath; it startled Martin, who stumbled a bit despite the fact that he was leaning against the desk.
"I think…I think I'll go," Martin said, moving unsteadily towards the door. Simon didn't have anything useful to say, so he let him go and got back to work, telling the first bloke that made a joke about the expression on his brother's face to shut the fuck up.
* * * * *
Sherlock Holmes was beginning to become irritated. It had been several days since anything remotely interesting had happened. Even when he'd tried to engineer an interesting incident by bringing a hawk to Scotland Yard and trying to get it to fly around the main office, Lestrade had just opened his door and yelled at everyone to get out until Sherlock was finished with his attention seeking. Nobody had complained at being told to go and hang around in the corridor and the hawk had soon got bored with the place, preferring instead to try to nip at Sherlock's ear.
This lack of interesting incidents meant that, contrarily, he was getting even less inclined to do anything to find something which might occupy him. When the post arrived he ignored it, up until the point when John started nagging at him about it.
"That one's handwritten," John said, gesturing vaguely to the small pile on the table. Sherlock continued to stare at the ceiling. "Could be a case."
"Of course it could," Sherlock said, deciding to save the energy it would take to roll his eyes. He could use that energy later for thinking up a better diversion than a hawk. Perhaps a land animal. A goat was too easily herded…a yak? No, it had to be something he could get past the front desk without being stopped. Maybe several somethings…
"So, it could be an interesting case. You're bored, might as well see if it's worthwhile."
"The ones that write are rarely worthwhile," Sherlock snapped. "It's all women over fifty who say they want to know if their husband is cheating on them when a five year old could correctly interpret the signs; what they actually want is for me to lie to them and say no, of course, he loves you just as much as he did the day you married. Or they've lost some important piece of jewellery and it turns out to have been stolen - by the sink." Even as he spoke he ripped open the letter, because doing so would shut John up about it and then maybe Sherlock could use him as a better sounding board for the ideas about which animals to use. Bees sounded like a nice idea, but carrying the hive would be problematic, to say the least…
He scanned the first paragraph of the letter, stopping at the point where its author told him he would be confused. "As I thought, written by an imbecile," he said, and dropped it.
John looked at the letter. "Husband cheating or lost jewellery?"
"A dead stranger," Sherlock told him, rubbing the palms of his hands at his temples. "What is the largest animal you could conceivably conceal under your clothing?"
"Probably a rabbit, or a small dog," John replied without much thought. His lack of imagination was endlessly frustrating. "Can I read it?"
Sherlock waved a hand magnanimously at him and considered ferrets.
A few minutes later, John spoke, and Sherlock was pulled momentarily from his thoughts by the curious tone in his voice. "Sherlock, I think you'd better read this."
"They're never as interesting as they seem, John," he huffed, but John shook his head.
"No, I think this one might be. It's not actually from a client, anyway. It's about you. Supposedly."
"A fan letter, then. Dull."
"Nope…not that either." Sherlock hoped he was going to shut up soon. "I'll just read it to you, shall I?" The hope was clearly in vain.
John read the letter, and Sherlock paid attention only because otherwise, John would read it again. He became actively interested in it only at the point when mummy's name was mentioned. When he'd finished reading, John remained blessedly quiet for several minutes.
"Sherlock?" he eventually spoke. "What are you thinking?"
"I am thinking a great number of things," Sherlock replied. His thoughts about the right animal had been shifted to the back burner for the time being, but they were still there. Higher in the processing order was the idea that he had been a member of a different family at the beginning of his life.
He held out a hand for the letter, and John passed it over. He couldn't deduce much from it, as it was a photocopy, but the handwriting itself at least confirmed that it had been written by a woman in her late fifties or early sixties. He picked up the envelope; it had been posted outside of London. The letter had been copied several years before the envelope was addressed, so the date could easily be true.
Whether the story within the letter could be true, however, was something else altogether.
"Do you think it's true?" John asked him after another pause.
Sherlock moved to standing from his reclined position in one fluid movement. "I haven't decided," he said, and reached for his coat. "Mind the mouse; it's next to the salad." He left as quickly as he could, but heard John's sigh on his way down the stairs.
Continue to next chapter
Pic
This entry was originally posted at http://ficofpic.dreamwidth.org/50530.html. Please comment there using OpenID.