Sherlock Fic: An Empty Station (4/4)
Day 1
Molly finds them in the hall when she exits the morgue at 4:20 pm. John's refused to move, so he's leaning back against the wall next to the bin with his head on his knees, trying to breathe. Lestrade has found a pen in his trouser pocket; he flips it end-over-end through his fingers, over and over again. Mycroft watches the movement absently. The smell of sick is sharp and acid in the air. John tries to get up as soon as Molly comes out, but Lestrade puts a hand on his shoulder, keeps him right where he is. Mycroft is the only one who stands to face her. He smooths his hand down his shirt once, futile, before he clears his throat. “Ms. Hooper,” he says.
Molly eyes him up, and then she looks down at them, small and sad and gray. She's holding a clipboard clasped against her chest like a shield. She angles herself so she can talk to all three of them at once, her back to the doors of the morgue.
Her face tells them enough. But John is stubborn, and he stares Molly down. Makes her say it.
“I'm sorry,” she says, quietly, and she's already choking up. Mycroft closes his eyes, just for a moment. Molly takes a deep breath, hiccups through it. She meets Lestrade's gaze, just briefly, rests on Mycroft for longer. And then she looks John right in the face. “He fell from fifteen stories up. He impacted the ground. The cranial damage was--”
John makes a wrenching sound and closes his eyes. Molly reaches out and lays a hand on his shoulder, waits until his eyes open again. She leans down and looks right at him, and she shakes her head. “John. He's dead.”
“No,” Lestrade whispers.
Molly looks at him, and she's crying openly now. “Sherlock is dead,” she says.
There is a horrible, drowning silence.
Mycroft hitches in a breath, almost too soft to hear. “Thank you, Ms. Hooper,” he says, without inflection. “I will be in touch with you about arrangements.” He straightens himself. He collects his umbrella. And he turns on his heel, shoes echoing in the hall, and he leaves his brother in the morgue without another word.
Molly reaches out to touch John's arm, and it goads Lestrade into motion at last. They manage to heft John up between them, get him inside and settled down so Molly can shine a penlight in his eyes and lay him down.
Day 66
It's three in the morning on Monday when he gets in from wrapping a case that lasted all weekend. Even though he's bone tired, he's not remotely ready to sleep yet. Somewhere in the last two days of chasing after suspects and fishing bodies out of the Thames and putting Hopkins through her paces, he's made up his mind about a few things. He sits down at his kitchen table, slides his palm along the edge of the wood. The corner is smooth and oiled down from the thousand other times he's done the same thing.
It's time, he realizes. Not so much because he feels like he's ready, or because something in particular happened today, or this week, that makes him feel prepared. He's simply realized that if he doesn't finally do it, doesn't open the blasted letter, he may never do it at all.
He's uncertain about so much, but he's discovered that he's not one to live with any more regrets than he can help. He's a lot of things, but a coward will not be one of them. Not today.
Lestrade reaches into his coat pocket, and he takes out the letter. Looks the blank envelope over again, brushes his fingers across the heavy grain of it. He tucks his forefinger under the edge of the flap and finally, carefully, peels it open.
There's a single piece of heavy white paper folded up inside. He lifts it out, smooths it across the grains of the table. The message turns out to be five words, collected neatly in the middle of the page.
Lestrade,
Thank you.
-Sherlock Holmes
Greg's hands start to shake, and his throat closes up. He reads it again. And then he puts his head down on the table, one hand covering Sherlock's writing, and he laughs and laughs and laughs, until he cries.
Day 51
Hopkins moves into her new desk on July 11th. She's already shuffling her things around the computer monitor when Lestrade comes in at seven thirty. She sees him coming, steps to the side of her desk, and gives him a smile and a full-out salute. Lestrade makes a face at her. “Enough of that, Sergeant.”
She subsides back into her chair, grins a little. “Sorry, sir. Knew I'd only get away with it once.”
They're going to get along, he can tell already. There's no one else around yet-they're both an hour early-so instead of waving her into his office, Lestrade leans his hip against the corner of her desk instead. He puts his coffee down next to her pencil holder and sticks his hands in his pockets as he looks down at her, head tilted. “Alright, Hopkins. Tell me what you're doing here.”
Her brows furrow. “I'm here because you accepted my transfer request, sir. And thank you for that, while we're on it.”
He waves her off. “No, what are you doing here, really? You could be anywhere you please right now, so why here?”
She looks at him, and he looks at her, and they just stare each other down for a minute, trying to size each other up through body language. He regrets putting the coffee down, now. Eventually she gives a little shrug and pushes her chair back from the desk a bit, so she can cross one leg over the other. “I'm here because you have the best case-solve rate in the department, sir. I think you're the best there is to learn from, and I mean to get the best.”
Lestrade lets his surprise register on his face. “Need I remind you that my case-solve record is thanks in large part to Sherlock Holmes?”
This time she's the one to wave him off. “Look, I've read the reports, all the ones I can get my hands on. Holmes didn't solve all of them for you. But even the ones he did...” she sighs and looks away for a second. “Sir, I don't know how you feel about this, so I apologize if I step on...” He nods, understanding. She takes a deep breath and continues, “I don't believe a word of it.” She looks up at him again, very focused. “Well, I don't know enough about him to say that for sure, I suppose, but as far as his methods go? They're unparalleled, sir. They're brilliant, and they're effective, and you know that as well as I do, because you kept getting him back for cases. And you're not the only one. He couldn't have set them all up, it's ridiculous to think that. Which means he was right, and those reports of yours are the most fascinating things I've ever seen. I know good police work when I see it, alright? You're a good detective, sir. And Holmes was a good consultant. So that's why I'm here.”
“Alright,” Lestrade says, blankly. He can't find anything else to say. He feels like something in his chest has been scooped out and he's been left lighter. His clears his throat and resists the urge to run a hand through his hair, because there's no point giving away his tells this early in the game.
This is when the thought hits him, suddenly and fully formed, and entirely correct. He nods, mind made up. “Right. Have you read John Watson's blog?”
Hopkins thinks about it, then shakes her head. “Don't think I have, sir, come to mention it.”
“Well,” he says. He knows this is going to sound strange, but he is struck by the thought that, if she's really here for what she says, then she needs to know. “First assignment, Hopkins. You're going to go through John Watson's blogs. Call them consultant reports. Then you're going to find all of those cases in our official reports-mine, Dimmock's, Stratford's, whoever else. And you're going to compare the case notes. Come back to me when you have it done. The inquiry board's probably got a listing of all the included files, if you want a cheat sheet.”
He's suggesting his own probationary paperwork as a reference. He wonders, vaguely, when this became his life. Hopkins is already pulling up her internet browser. “And what am I looking for in these exactly, sir?”
Lestrade thinks about watching Sherlock all those years, being continually amazed and befuddled and annoyed by those insane, brilliant deductions. He thinks about what he's learned, and how he's learned it, and he wonders how to pass that on. Wonders why it's suddenly so important to pass it on.
He considers how Sherlock would do this. And suddenly he knows. “You said you wanted the best,” he says. “So you tell me. Make your own deductions. Compare the reports and then come tell me what you've learned.”
She has John's blog pulled up already, hums an assent at him. Lestrade smiles a little and goes to his office to start the day. Unorthodox or not, he has a feeling that he just handled that exactly right.
Day 39
“You're going to have to go back eventually,” he tells John over drinks on Monday night. They're sprawled across Greg's furniture because neither of them felt like going out, and John's hotel room is bloody depressing. Lestrade tilts to rest sideways against the arm of the sofa and points at John with a serious-if slightly inebriated-finger. “Really,” he insists. “At least to look through things. It's all packed up now. Mrs Hudson's going out of her mind all alone in that place.”
John takes a long pull of his beer, puts it down, taps his fingertips against the neck of the bottle. “I don't know how to do it,” he admits, so quietly that Lestrade has to lean forward to hear him. “I don't know how...”
“Go on,” Lestrade prompts him. He knows how important this is.
John clears his throat. “I don't know how I'm supposed to go back in there and see all of it when he's-when Sherlock is--” he cuts off, closes his eyes, presses a hand to his chest for a brief moment. Feeling the wound he's about to lance open.
Greg shifts toward him again until he can rest a gentle hand on John's shoulder, until he can feel the tension all through his limbs. “Say it,” he murmurs.
“You're not my therapist,” John chokes out.
“I'm your friend,” Lestrade replies.
John takes a deep breath. He opens his eyes. He turns to Lestrade.
“Sherlock is dead,” he says. “There. Is that better? Ella made me say it, did you know that? Everyone's so determined to make me say it, well there it is!” He's standing, suddenly, and he's shouting. “Sherlock is-he's my best friend, he's the only good thing to happen to me since I got shot, maybe even before. And he's always been three steps ahead of me, but I thought he needed me! I trusted him to tell me the truth, but people will remember him as the psychopath who paid Richard Brooke, and they'll believe it because there's just enough truth for them to swallow the lie! And I-I asked him. I asked him not to be dead. I stood there in front of his bloody tombstone and I begged a dead man to come back to life, because I don't know how to get on without him. Alright? He's my best friend and he left me behind!”
John stops abruptly and turns away, presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. Lestrade sits silently on the sofa and lets him collect himself. After a few long, painful minutes, John speaks, back still turned. “I'll go this weekend,” he says. He sounds exhausted. “I'll start looking through his things.”
“I'll go with you,” Lestrade promises.
John turns to look at him then, as if he's going to protest. They stare each other down. In the end, John drops onto the sofa, and he picks up his beer again. “You're a good friend,” John tells him.
“I'm not him, John.” He has to point it out, just once, just so it's said.
“Good,” John says fiercely. “Because I'm furious at him, and I'm tired of shouting.”
Lestrade chuckles at that. “Good enough,” he says, and it is. He finds an afghan to wrap around John's shoulders, and then he goes to bed.
Day 53
On the morning of July 13th, Friday, Hopkins marches into his office, slams down a massive stack of papers, and collapses into his office chair with her head in her hands.
Lestrade puts down his motor-oil break room coffee, which he hasn't managed to get a drink of yet today, and pulls the files toward him. There are John's blogs, printed out and paper-clipped to official reports. Lestrade flips through them, sees that she's highlighted things in three different colours, drawn arrows, written long comments in some kind of shorthand in the margins. At several junctures, particularly in the reports Lestrade recognizes as his own, there are just exclamation points or question marks. It's clear that it's taken her the two days solid at work, and probably more at home, to go through it all. He reorders the papers into a neat pile and folds his hands on top of them. Hopkins hasn't moved. “Alright,” he says. “What have you learned?”
She looks up at him through her fingers, and finally manages to straighten up. “I have learned,” she says, with deliberate clearness, “that I know absolutely nothing about anything.” She rubs her hands into her eyes. “Also, I need a drink.”
Lestrade just manages to bite back a smile. She's grasped it, that exact feeling and tone of voice that Lestrade recognizes from himself and every other detective that's ever worked with Sherlock Holmes and glimpsed the brief edges of just how big the world is, and just how little of it the average human being comprehends. He pushes his undrunk coffee over to her side of the desk by way of sympathetic reward.
“That's not what I meant,” she says, but she takes it anyway.
Lestrade is going to enjoy this. He settles back in his chair and laces his fingers behind his neck. “So, let's have it, then.”
It takes them the entire rest of the day, and they forget to break for lunch.
Day 49
Lestrade has never actually called Mycroft before; it's always been the other way round, and the number he has saved in his contacts no longer works. After some consideration, Lestrade fights down the chills of horrible suspicion that work down his spine, and he goes over to Baker Street on Sunday afternoon. Mrs Hudson lets him in with minimum fuss, especially after he tells her that it looks like John will be headed here sometime in the next week.
Once he's upstairs on his own, he stands in the middle of the sitting room, plants his hands on his hips, and addresses the thin air.“You meddling sod,” he says in a loud, clear voice. “Messing about with the Yard is one thing, holding my job, that I appreciate, but this is a step too far! You can't just go rearranging other people's careers at the drop of--”
His mobile rings in his pocket. He flips it open, and Mycroft sighs at him. “Must you be so dramatic?” the man asks in lieu of a greeting. “My brother has been a horrible influence on your character. The car is waiting outside.” Lestrade goes over to the window and looks down, and there it is, the ubiquitous black car.
“I cannot believe you bugged your brother's flat,” he says as he slides inside.
Mycroft flicks a hand at him, like the moral repercussions of highly sophisticated personal privacy invasion are an annoying fly that should be shooed into someone else's corner of the car.
Lestrade feels achingly tired all of a sudden. He lets out a long exhale and slumps into the corner of the seat. The car thrums beneath them and they pull away down the road. Mycroft's attention is on a file full of papers in his lap, and for the moment he seems content to ignore Greg entirely.
“Seriously,” Lestrade says, when he can't take the quiet any longer. “You can't keep doing this.”
Mycroft raises an eyebrow and settles back into his seat. “Inspector Lestrade. I arranged for you to keep your position because I feel-and Sherlock agreed with me in this regard-that the Metropolitan Police Force is significantly benefited by your continued presence as a law enforcement official.”
Lestrade knows that's true, and it's almost flattering. But he's not in the mood today, so he counters, “You know that the place is at least half in the pocket of Moriarty, or Brooke, or whoever the hell's actually in charge there. Branches of the higher-ups are rotten or going soft, and you'd prefer to have someone at your beck and call with a warrant card that owes you favours.”
“You make me sound quite uncharitable.” Mycroft taps his forefinger against the files in his lap. “Regardless of your thoughts on your employment status, that is the only thing I can take the blame for in this situation. I have had no contact with Sergeant Leigh Hopkins at all. Though by all appearances, she will make an excellent addition to the Yard. I would think you would be quite excited to take her under your wing, as it were.”
Lestrade attempts to stare him down. Mycroft keeps his expression perfectly bland and still, clearly just to be annoying, until Lestrade gives up. “You mean to tell me,” he says slowly, sounding it out to himself, “that the brightest mind the Yard's seen in years, with more opportunities than any officer should have at that age, has taken a look at all her options and decided, of her own free will, to try and sign on with a washed-up detective who has a black mark on his record and virtually no social or political pull.”
“That would seem to be the case.”
Lestrade pinches the bridge of his nose. “But why?”
“I haven't the faintest idea,” Mycroft says cheerfully. “Perhaps you should ask her.”
The car rolls to a stop. Lestrade sighs. “Yeah, alright,” he concedes. The door is opened by an assistant. Just as he's getting out, Lestrade turns back. “Hey, didn't we agree that you were going to use my name?”
It's Mycroft's turn to be a little surprised; at least that's how Lestrade chooses to interpret the way he reaches down and flicks an invisible piece of lint off his pants. “Greg,” Mycroft says, pleasantly. “Have a lovely evening.”
“Cheers,” Lestrade returns, and gets out of the car proper, only to discover that he's been dropped at John's hotel.
John is waiting for him by the front doors, and he has a suitcase by his feet. Lestrade makes his way over and leans against the wall next to him for a moment, trying to shake the atmospheric pressure shift that always happens during a conversation with Mycroft.
John nods at the black car, which is making its way down the street again. “And how'd that go?”
“I have no idea,” Lestrade says, quite honestly. “I had one question. Any normal human being could have had that conversation
through text message and saved us all the trouble.”
“Mycroft never texts when he can call,” John says with a shrug. “Or better yet, when he can abduct you off the street and make you feel uneasy about your basic existence on his way to something else.” He cranes to look around again. “Hang on, where's your car?”
“Oh, bugger.” Lestrade looks around as well in vain hopes that-no, of course not. “It's at Baker Street where I left it.” He takes a look at the suitcase at John's feet and finally does the math. “You're headed over, then?”
John looks away, down at his feet. “I was working up the nerve to hail a cab,” he admits.
“Said I'd come along,” Lestrade reminds him gently.
John blows out a breath, nods. “Well in that case, you can get us the cab.”
Greg does, and they go.
It's easier than they expect, in the end. It's just a place, even a place with memories attached, and John's a soldier. He manages to get inside, through a conversation with Mrs Hudson, and upstairs to put his things away with Greg carefully at his elbow. They spend the rest of the day sorting through boxes without breaking anything-or anyone-into pieces.
Day 83
He and John are supposed to be doing their usual Friday pub-crawl-and-complaint outing tonight, but Lestrade has a case he can't shake, and John ends up working late at the clinic he's been volunteering with. In the end, Lestrade goes over to Baker Street to wait for him, and he brings work along. Mrs Hudson lets him in with a smile, and Greg spreads things out on the coffee table so he can stare at scene photos and initial forensics reports.
He's missing something. He knows he is. It must be something obvious. Lestrade feels like he's blind. He keeps going round and round in circles, thinking the same things in the same ways. Isn't that the definition of insanity? He's starting to believe it.
Sherlock would have found it already, a small voice in his head says, very clearly. It makes Lestrade angry, suddenly, deep and visceral. He has to close his eyes and breathe through it. When he opens them again, nothing about the case has changed.
By the time John shows up at half seven, Lestrade's worked himself into a bit of a state.
“Hey,” John says as he enters the sitting room. “Sorry about that, hope you didn't...” he trails off as he absorbs the sight Lestrade must make-his face, the tension in his shoulders, the spread of papers, the stack of case photos tossed around the sofa-and he goes still. “Ah,” he says. “Tough case?”
And all at once, Lestrade remembers why he told himself he wouldn't bring work around John. He winces and reaches for the papers, tries to start collecting them. “Yeah. God, I'm sorry, you probably don't--”
“It's fine,” John says with a little smile. Lestrade looks over at him, unconvinced. But John stands there and lets him do it-shoulders back, eyes direct, posture easy. For the first time since Sherlock jumped, John looks entirely himself. Lestrade feels even more out of touch than before.
“I can't figure it out,” he admits. The words choke him coming out. He throws his pen down onto the table with more force than necessary, scrubs his hand through his hair and pulls until he can focus on something outside his own head. “Nothing makes sense! I don't have all the data, and it doesn't matter how many people I talk to, nothing new comes up and I have to tell that father and his kids that their mum is gone, because the last three disappeared too and I can't-”
John's gentle fingers on his wrist stops him short. “Hey,” John says softly, and tugs Lestrade's hands away from his head. “Greg. Come on, you're going to pull your hair out. As a medical professional, I can assure you that there are less damaging ways of dealing with stress.”
Lestrade huffs out a snort and relaxes a little. “Sorry,” he says. “Didn't mean to...”
“It's really alright,” John tells him. He sits on a clear patch of sofa. “I'm your friend, you can say anything you like.”
Greg stares around at the debris of this case. Something small and sour festers in the base of his stomach. Inadequacy. Stupidity.
“I'm not him, John,” he says. The words scare him to death-he hadn't meant to say them aloud, hadn't even realize he'd been feeling them so strongly until they materialized. He gestures at the mess he's made in John's sitting room. “Doesn't matter how much evidence I have or how many times I look at it. There are some things I just don't know, I can't solve things the way he could.”
“No one can,” John says.
“That's the bloody point!” Lestrade shouts, and he rocks to his feet. “No one else could ever do it! And there are criminals, murders, kidnappers who are getting away with it because no one else can ever manage to be bloody Sherlock Holmes! I'll never be that good, no one can be! There's a hole in the world that no one else can fill, no copper or detective, and bad guys are slipping through it, and I can't do a damn thing about it!”
He turns away to look out the window and tries to breathe. Tries to control himself. He reaches out a hand and presses his palm against the glass. “I'm tired to death of losing,” he whispers. “I'm sick of watching people get away with it. And now there's no one to call. It's just me, and I can't pull a deduction out of my hat and magically point out the guy who did it. I'm not Sherlock Holmes.”
He hears John's footsteps crunch over the papers on the floor. Feels the solid presence of him as he stands next to Lestrade at the window, shoulders not quite brushing. Greg keeps his eyes closed.
“I miss him,” he says. It's very true, just now.
“I miss him too,” John murmurs. Then they stand that way, not speaking, for a long time.
Day 99
Lestrade hasn't been sleeping well. That's not unusual, really, but this is a different kind of exhaustion-he's having trouble turning his brain off, keeps picking at the edges of things in his mind, replaying bits of random conversations over and over as he waits to drift off. Most of it's about Sherlock. It figures that the man still keeps him up nights, even after being dead for three months.
He doesn't notice that it's affecting him during daylight hours, though, until Hopkins leans over in the middle of their usual post-case dinner hour and snaps her fingers two inches from his face. He frowns and bats her hand away. “Oy!”
“You're glazing over,” she informs him. He levels a stern I am your superior glare at her, which she completely ignores. She's learning fast, this one. “Seriously, sir. You alright? You've been thinking awfully hard all week.”
“Have I?” He looks back on the last few days and realizes she's right. He's not just tired, he's processing something, waiting for bits
and pieces to come together to form a whole. It's an old mental tool that he's come to rely on for cases, but they don't have one on right now. “Wonder what that's about,” he murmurs.
Hopkins raises an eyebrow at him, which is an expression he's becoming familiar with. She usually brings it out when she can't decide whether to be amused or concerned about his personal life choices. Lestrade balls up his napkin and throws it at her, which makes her laugh, and he doesn't think much more about it for the rest of the day.
Day 100
Lestrade wakes up like a shot. He sits bolt upright and stares into the dark of his bedroom as his brain finally, finally catches up with everything it's been churning with since May. Things fall into a string in his head, one after the other. The red numbers glowing on his alarm clock tell him that it's 2:30am on Tuesday, August 29th . He heaves himself out of bed and scrambles for his mobile. As soon as he finds it he makes a break for his desk, where he digs out the letter from Sherlock. He brings both of them to the table with him and slaps a light on before he stands there staring down at them. Only then, with the lights on and with the evidence in front of him, does he let himself take a careful breath and think through it all again. He picks up his mobile, feels the weight of it in his palm. He pages through his contact history and thanks heaven that he hardly gets any texts these days.
On May 20th, Lestrade received the text that sent him to Bart's at 3:48pm.
He knows that Sherlock jumped at 3:46pm, because he was there for John's witness account.
Up until a few minutes ago, Lestrade has been under the impression that the text was from Mycroft, because it's signed with his initials, and his number is always blocked. Also, he used the S.E. shorthand, which only the two of them know. At least, he's always assumed that no one else knows.
Go to St. Bart's immediately.
Mycroft never texts if he can talk. Though he would have been busy that day, certainly. Any normal human being would have texted.
No Holmes has ever been a normal human being.
John will need you.
Sherlock didn't leave Mycroft anything in the will. He somehow managed to leave this note for Lestrade, though, in a place his brother didn't expect to find it, at some time when Mycroft didn't catch him doing it.
Lestrade sits down at the table very, very slowly. He's afraid his thoughts will break apart and dissolve like fragile slivers of a dream. His head is made of glass. He reaches out to smooth the letter open and reads it again, all five words of it.
Lestrade,
Thank you.
-Sherlock Holmes.
It isn't enough evidence to prove anything, of course, not if that's all he has. It's a shaky case, but Greg Lestrade has learned a thing or two by now, and he knows. A text message sent two minutes after a suicide, no actual proof of authorship besides Sherlock. Emergency. A letter he never expected to receive, and that Mycroft never expected to give. A letter, Lestrade is beginning to suspect, that was penned sometime on the morning of May 20th when Sherlock knew for certain that Lestrade would do something worth saying thanks for.
John will need you.
They'll believe it because there's just enough truth for them to swallow the lie.
Sherlock Holmes is no killer. But he's always been a liar.
They never saw the body.
Obvious. Do try to keep up, Inspector.
Lestrade feels a smile crack his face, even as the rest of him is descending into a numb kind of shock. Because he knows, deep down in his bones where things are right or wrong, that he is absolutely right, and he was never meant to figure this out.
He's not Sherlock Holmes. Turns out he never had to be.
Lestrade reaches out his hands for support; one comes to rest on Sherlock's letter, and the other on his mobile.
“He's alive,” he whispers.
The words feel strange on his tongue; they're so quiet that they're swallowed by the sounds of his breath heaving in his chest, his heart pounding thud-thud in his sternum and his wrists. For a long moment, he just breathes, and he feels the world reorder quietly around him.
Day 1
On the other side of the morgue, where the lights are dimmed, there is a body on a slab. It is draped in a white sheet, anonymous and still. It looks like a statue, almost, some kind of abandoned monument to a king, left to wait forever for a carved-in face. Just an object, now, a symbol, no person present.
Lestrade closes his eyes and fights to breathe.
Day 100
“Sherlock's alive,” he says again.
The phone rings in his hand.
-
Part III