BBC Sherlock Young Adult Fan-Fic. The Witch's Heart. P12.

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THE WITCH’S HEART

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Part 12.

Sherlock’s family had known the Pittmans forever. Translation: as long as Sherlock had been alive, the Pittmans, McKenzies, Clefs, and Murray-Heaths had been in the picture.

They were part of the fencing/polo set. Over the years, Mycroft had whipped one after the other of their ilk in one sport or another, until he had achieved that most ‘Holmsian’ of things: unrivalled dominance. They were people of a higher status, socially, some of them being peers, but lower, operationally, being less adept, having fewer contacts, amassing less wealth than the cunning Holmes family.

Sherlock had had to put up with boys like these for years. One year, at the Christmas party Emeline inflicted upon her youngest and most rambunctious son every year, Vardy’s brother, Dean, had locked Sherlock in the pantry. He’d spent three hours there before 14 year old Mycroft had figured things out and come to get him.

It seemed impossible to him.

Now, he couldn’t seem to find them. He checked the gym with the pistes, anything approaching a games room in their Colleges, and each of their en suites on campus. These guys were thick as thieves. He felt to find even one of them would be the key to finding them all. But he searched until there was only one last place he could think of. He trudged up the Cam, his body heavy with the weight of what he was about to do, not just to the Pittman family, but to all the families, his own included. His childhood memories too.

His phone pinged. ‘Where are you?’

It wasn’t Merriweather or Emma this time. Long odds on that!

It was Danas. Where had she been? He was vexed, but also pragmatic.

‘The sunglasses at Dyers, the ones I took from the L&F box. They are Villard/Vardy Pittman’s.’

‘Who is that?’

‘Daniel used to watch Vardy and his friends fence.’ He thought about it and added. ‘You know, with swords?’ She knew he’d gotten a sword wound while investigating this crime.

Danas didn’t take long to reply. ‘Sherlock, WHERE ARE YOU?’

If he answered that, she would come and stop him. He looked up from his phone at the hulking front-end loaders and gritters that loomed out of the dark. Somewhere along the way, it had begun to snow. His hood was up though, and, though he was chilly, he wasn’t really cold.

His mobile pinged again. ‘Do NOT go near these people, Sherlock. WAIT FOR ME. I’m coming.’

He tucked his mobile away. My… she loved her all caps, Danas. The wind caught his hood and threw snowflakes at his bare throat. He ducked his head low, wishing he had a good scarf. He could, of course, take one from the Lost and Found at Dyer’s. There would be a certain element of irony in that. His gloved fingers tightened around the shades in his pocket.

The snow got thick in this exposed stretch of the Cam. He kept a straight line only by focussing on the thatch of trees down by the river. Soon, he pushed the short wire fence under his boot, the season’s snow having blown to this corner of the clearing, and built up to such a level as would let him easily walk over the top of it. His were the only tracks coming in this way.

Beyond him was a small, dark, wood structure with a large pair of doors at the front and a smaller slab door along a rickety wood porch at its flank. The wood was old and deep brown, the stain long since worn away so that the water was slowly disintegrating the shed. The nail heads had turned hand cut shingles dark with rust. Wind made the trees above it moan.

What a God forsaken little shack.

Sherlock edged down the porch as quietly as the old wood allowed. The door was not locked. The latch, oddly, worked as if oiled. Because it was well-oiled. And well-used. He paused a moment before opening it, exhaled, and then the door glided open and he was inside shutting it.

Inside in the bright glow of a lamp.

One large lamp could warm this place… relative to the outside.

The tall young man inside with him was indistinguishable, standing back-on to Sherlock, and in a tailored hooded coat. In fact, Sherlock just knew that the coat was pricy, as were the jeans and boots.

There was no one else… he looked around.

Sherlock was surprised to find the inside of this shack better kept than the exterior. For one thing, its roof was patched. There were also black tarps duct-taped along the ceiling and sections of the walls. The wood was clean and bright. The ring of benches that sat under the lantern looked comfortable, owing to the patchwork of various blankets and pillows there. It didn’t… smell bad in here. Surprising. The waft of cold at his ankles, it came from the inky black water at the back of the structure. He turned to look over at the broad sealed doors which had been insulated with newspapers and more tarp. This was a boat house. One end of it was on shore, and the other, though closed, stood on thick wood posts over the river. The double doors between this room and the water yawned so that the oil lamp’s rays reflected on water that looked oily black in confinement.

Sherlock’s only company stared out at the water as if alone. But that wasn’t the case anymore. Finally, someone else knew what he’d done.

“So. Is this the light?” Sherlock asked.

The figure didn’t even move.

“The salt being Bill Dyer’s salt domes: the Salt and Light Society?” It was like talking to his mother’s lawn statuary. “You spent time in Dyer’s on the night of Daniel’s death?”

His voice was sad. “He liked to pace when he was thinking. He always paced a lot when he was talking to me. This place isn’t big enough.”

Sherlock felt the wind knocked out of him. “Tim?”

Timothy Murray-Heath turned to take Sherlock in; Sir Timothy Murray-Heath, who was the son of a Baron, yet always decent to Sherlock Holmes, if despairingly juvenile.

“No-no,” Sherlock said faintly. He stepped forward and took out the sunglasses. He extended them to Timothy. “Vardy… Villard, not you. You would never. You wouldn’t do business with this Society because of who you are, Tim. You….” But his voice fell away. Tim was an oaf, but an oaf who’d accepted Sherlock in situ, no matter the opinion of the rest of the social set. “No.”

Timothy took off his gloves and folded them into his pockets. “I’d do business with him. I didn’t care for Daniel’s Society. I didn’t even know about it at first, really. He’s just this blonde guy who watched me fence…. I wish it had stayed that way. I… I made a mistake. I thought I could trust him. I thought… a lot of things.” He took back the glasses and turned them over in his hands. “Thanks. Can you get them back to Vardy? I’ve had them for a month now. I just forgot.”

“Of course.” Sherlock took them back and then just stared at the front of Tim’s coat, feeling things, none of them good. Sadness took hold of him.

“Sherlock… it was my mistake, not yours. Don’t look that way, okay? And… what happened to your face?” He ducked down a little.

“Aaron Bryford.” Sherlock said emptily. “Not important.”

“Bryford. What an ass. Two brain-cells on shift work. It’s swelling though.” Tim’s hand reached out and laid itself on Sherlock’s cheek in a luxurious sweeping gesture that made Sherlock freeze.

No one had ever touched his face that way before. Except girls.

Sherlock blinked. “Oh. Okay. So Daniel was gay. And you two were together. Makes this a crime of passion. Something went awry and you lost it. You drowned him.”

“I made a mistake. Like… a massive, I-can’t-ever-take-it-back, mistake. God… I’m so sorry.” Tim collected himself and nodded at Sherlock. “And I’m not gay. I just kind of was curious. I… liked him a lot. I thought, you know, he was right for me. As it turns out, he wanted my help with this little lean-to.”

Sherlock’s misty-jade eyes turned upwards to take Tim in. “You mean he wanted you to teach them, the boys in the Society?” He eased Tim’s hand aside thoughtlessly, with the back of one wrist.

“Uhm, yep. Daniel was really driven, kind of unrelenting about things. He reminds me of you when you were a kid, you know? Only it’s like he didn’t grow out of it.” Tim’s smile was bittersweet. He touched the purpling side of Sherlock’s face this time. He used extreme care and turned Sherlock’s head a little. “Bryford really walloped you one. I’d kick his ass… but I don’t know if that’s going to work out, because what happens to me now… is kind of up to you.”

Sherlock shut his eyes. He’d known Tim for so many years now: a large and dumb oxen of a boy; three years his senior; good-natured; harmless…. There’d been a tragedy for him, recently. It had torn his family apart and sent Murray-Heath home part of a term. Sherlock hadn’t even looked in on him. He hadn’t even thought about doing so. This was a friend of the family. This was someone who had treated Sherlock as an equal in the past. Sherlock stood his ground vastly divorced from his present situation. He felt anesthetized. “Then tell me why you drowned him.”

“Well… that night it was basically ‘Help me… or I’ll tell your mother you’re gay’, right? My mother. I mean, dad died less than three months ago. She’s reeling… and he’s threatening to tell her something like that? My family would implode on something like that. You know them.”

“Yes.” Sherlock swept the hand away again. “Why didn’t you help him?”

“I don’t know. I would have, I think, but… I just have been under such pressure - the lawyers and estate; mother, and her pills,” Tim paused to catch his breath. “And I thought he cared about me, not any of that. I snapped and started pushing him around. That was up at Dyer’s, when he was planning. After he fell in the salt, he got up and left me there. I should have walked back to Cambridge. I wish I’d…. Anyway… I came down here and we got to yelling. I shoved him. When he fell in, I swear I went to help him, but then, I just… didn’t. I had hold of his coat and I just didn’t lift him out. I let him go. I was just so pissed.” Tim blinked away moisture and sighed. He looked down from his memories at Sherlock’s pale face, and pushed his hands forward. “What now?”

Sherlock closed his eyes. “I’m… I’m thinking.” If Oh my God, you fool qualified as thinking.

His long fingertips ran down Sherlock’s neck into his coat and jarred Sherlock’s thin frame. His mouth fell open in time with his eyes widening. Cold. Gooseflesh prickled his skin. “Don’t do that.” Sherlock backed away and said reflexively.

Tim’s fingers slid out again. But they came to rest on Sherlock’s face. It was unwelcome, and uncomfortable. Sherlock, however, had backed to a row of wood crates that prevented further retreat.

Mistake.

Timothy’s smile was bittersweet, “You know what? I knew you came here - to Uni - but I was like What odds about Mycroft’s unpleasant little brother?” he paused. “Then you went after me on the piste, and I couldn’t detect a thing about that that painful little menace that used to haunt the Holmes house. By the time you were done…. I’ve been far gone since dad died, and then… Daniel. But I felt something again. You’re magnificent. You’ve grown so beautiful. There’s this pale fire in your eyes. I just… the way I feel about you-”

Whoa. Sherlock turned his head when Tim moved down against him. “No.”

Timothy stroked the dark curls at the side of Sherlock’s head. “Easy. Take it easy. Easy, luv. I don’t care who you are, or aren’t, even if your family does. You know it’s true. And I’ll give you whatever you ask for that’s within my reach to get. You’ll be safe. It’s all right.”

Enough of Tim’s weight was on him that his voice squeezed out. “No, Tim, you don’t - no, I don’t like this. I’ve got a girl.”

He turned Sherlock’s head  by a mix of fear and sheer force. “One of the Merriweather’s girls? Yeah, I checked into that. She’s just for getting you high. If it wasn’t for that, you’d never go near her. Want to know why?”

Sherlock said, “No.”

Tim’s mouth came down over Sherlock’s bowed lips. Sherlock began to struggle at once, as was, he suspected, a matter of course. The sheer weight of this guy, against him, was an overwhelming force on its own. He didn’t care that Sherlock shoved at him frantically. He pressed Sherlock like a weight.

If he didn’t get air he would pass out. He was afraid of what would become of that. So Sherlock caught hold of his panic and stopped fighting. Tim kissed him, and he shook and waited.

Tim read this as acquiescence, as expected. He moved them. Sherlock’s legs bumped the benches and he bolted back and fell, but in a controlled way, because Tim, who had moved to his neck, was also guiding him down. If he was pinned by this guy, it would be over.

With a good deep breath, Sherlock corkscrewed and threw all his weight against Tim’s hands on his wrists. The larger boy was halfway over the benches; this worked to smaller Sherlock’s advantage. Tim tipped. When Sherlock stomped a designer boot down on the guy’s calf, he was suddenly free and falling onto the floor opposite Tim, who was also falling, and needed his hands to catch himself.

Sherlock took the only route available to him: he rolled und the bench and came out the other side with a hiss.

“Sherlock!?” Timothy scrambled up again. He favoured one knee now though. He sucked in air through his teeth and reached down to cup his hands around it. “You don’t know yourself!”

“I know you’re unstable and a murderer.” Sherlock said coldly. He wiped his lips off with his right sleeve. The bastard had no right. “Under no circumstances are you repeating yourself with me.”

“I said I wouldn’t hurt you!” Tim shouted. He caught hold of his temper almost visibly and said, “Sherlock, please. Our families are friends. This would be easy. It’s perfect. You’re just brilliant.”

“Yes, thanks. And when I’m done, a damn few heads more than your mother will know what you did.” Sherlock knew he couldn’t make the door before Timothy. He turned and crashed into the icy arms of the Cam.

It was horrible. Cold shock ripped through every system in his body. He treaded water and jaggedly sucked air. It was only about six and a half feet here. He had no more time. With what air he had, he made for the bottom and pushed toward the dull light beyond him. Then he was outside in impossible cold, heading for shore. He couldn’t make it to the safety of the other shore, so when he came out into the soft snow and churning wind, he could hear Tim crashing through the trees shouting for him. He sounded furious.

Sherlock scrambled through the icy grass and flattened to the wall of the shed. It had worked at West Road. Maybe he could use the clearance between the trees and his body to get through to the snow clogged field? It was more difficult going in this unkempt place, but it proved possible.

He floundered in the snow by the gate, tumbled over, and, from there, broke into a dead run. Behind him, he could hear Timothy coming. He was bigger, heavier, but also stronger, with longer legs. Sherlock didn’t know, of the two of them, which of them was going to be faster. He measured his run in agonising increments. He made it over the knee-wall into the back lot of Dyers. He lost time there, because his limbs were clumsy with cold and he fell.

But he scrambled up and pounded through the back lot toward the lights of the building - white and red in the snow. Timothy stepped right on his heel and spilled him down on the lot, catching hold of his wet coat. He was shouting something, but Sherlock wasn’t hearing well above his pulse and the winter wind. Sherlock jerked free of the coat his mother had given him, scrambled up, and kept running.

His head was woolly. The world wasn’t knitting together right. His lip and bottom of his chin were bloody from the last fall, and even the blood felt like ice. He moaned in the bitter cold that beat his defenceless body.

Lights.

Run for the lights.

Please, let this have worked.

His shoulder hit the side of the building. It didn’t hurt. Sherlock felt pretty sure that was bad.

Figures were running toward him, silhouetted against red and white lights - of police units. Danas had guessed exactly where he was going to go. When Sherlock reached them, he was half afraid they would arrest him, but the only hands that touched him also pulled him into a warm coat one of the Constabulary had hastily shrugged off. Sherlock gasped, unable to speak around the shivering.

“Secure him!” Danas was shouting. She ducked in to touch his cheek and ask, “Sherlock, honey, are you okay?”

Amazing. By some stretch of the imagination, did he look okay?

“Secure him.” She directed again. “Get him in a car before he freezes to death.” Danas hurried down along the side of Dyer’s bellowing: “Hands up!” She had a huge voice when roused.

Sherlock could hear the Constabulary arresting Timothy down by the very door that Daniel had used to pace among his salt ‘pyramids’, but he seemed sapped of the strength to turn his head. “I’m glad I'm numb,” he slurred.

“You’ll be all right, son.” Sherlock knew this tall man who called him ‘son’. He’d also been the one to donate his thick, warm jacket to Sherlock. Now he began to pick Sherlock up into customary threshold-carrying position.

Jimmy.

His sluggish, ice-jammed, brain supplied. Great.

“I can walk.” Sherlock’s voice smeared with the effects of hypothermia. The large officer set Sherlock down on his feet again, and kept getting taller and taller.

Sherlock discovered he couldn’t walk. The dead giveaway was that he folded down to the parking lot like wet laundry without a boy inside. “Uh-hm,” Jimmy nodded down at him gravely and picked him up. “Aces for effort, son.”

“Guh,” Sherlock pressed to the man’s heat like a thermal vampire.

“You shouldn’t do reckless things.” The man sighed, but caught himself before issuing a scolding.

Once he was in the police car, the heat didn’t seem to penetrate. He shuddered so hard the unit shook. It was a protracted hell of damp blankets, cranked heat, and uncontrollable shivering. Someone had swapped his insides for a bag of frozen turkey thighs.

Shortly after, Danas climbed in the front driver’s side, then she climbed out, and took her jacket off. When she got back in, she scooted around and laid it over the top of his head. “You look miserable.”

Only his eyes were visible in the mounds of blanket. “Where were you?”

“Trying to stay on the case,” she said acidly. “Politics. Look it’s not relevant anymore. My side was right. Husher’s side wasn’t. Thank God it didn’t cost you your life. Would you just try to rest?”

In spite of everything, he was having a hard time stringing words together.

Not thinking? For once, not a problem.

***

Midwinter was being televised this year.

It was convenient how no one had mentioned that to Sherlock until the night of the performance. He arrived and was ushered to a chair where women lifted his face and touched the fading bruises - they were much further along than the injury in his upper chest, but, thanks to doctors, that was coming along as well.

He’d woken up in his bed, sore, groggy, and naked, the night after ‘solving’ Daniel’s murder. Danas had brought him upstairs and helped him out of his jacket and shirt. Once she’d seen the wound she’d excused herself to call a doctor that often worked with the Cambridgeshire police. Sherlock had collapsed in his bed while she’d boiled the kettle for him.

It was the doctor who had stripped him naked. The doctor had made record of the bruising on Sherlock’s wrists from having been grappled-with and restrained. Sherlock had never spoken about it. Yes, it had been a male doctor, but Sherlock didn’t care for anyone to see him undressed. That feeling had been very keen having been attacked by Timothy Murray-Heath earlier in the night. Sherlock had been highly uncomfortable and uncharacteristically jumpy through the examination.

So it was he’d woken up naked, and… to Mycroft. So… the day had gone distinctly downhill. His twenty-four year old brother had sat in the chair beside his bed reading the Uni newspaper and sipping tea. Someone at Regency house had had Mycroft let in. In spite of the fact Sherlock had found Merriweather asleep on his couch, still with his violin beside her, it hadn’t been her.

Worse again, Mycroft had been directed to remain here for the week. Lockton’s doing.

So Mycroft was in the audience right now. It was horrible. Walking around Cambridge with Mycroft was like walking about with a celebrity who magnetically attracted the staff. He had been ever-so perfect here, a master of conforming to expectations and toeing the line. Mycroft was a right plonker; he never made a mistake with, or in, his life.

Thankfully, Sherlock was jarred out of this line of thinking. A portly, olive skinned woman arrived before him and bent to look at his face closely. She addressed the tiny, Scottish girl who had brought her to him to begin with. “Oh, you’re right, Maggie. It is beautiful, he’s like the surface of a glass figurine, but any kind of bisque is going to be too dark… and too warm. We’ll go with alabaster and find me the white powder… we’re definitely going to need the powder.” Then she selected a bottle from a case beside her and poured out some pale fluid with just a hint of pink. She dampened a sponge, daubed the fluid, and started to tap the mix at his cheekbones. The fluid was cool and very smooth, and there was nothing Sherlock could do but suffer the indignity.

His brows pulled up at the centre of his forehead. “Is this really necessary…?”

She laughed and daubed the span of skin between his puckered eyebrows. “So pretty! It’s all for the cameras, dearie, and we’ve been told you’re going to be front and centre tonight. Well, your skin is spectacular, so not as much work. Apart from the bruises. What happened?”

“I’m a boy.” He said leadenly. Therefore, not pretty.

“Ah. Well. We’ll hide the bruises for you if you let us do our job.” The smiling woman stopped fussing in the fragrant box of goodies on the brief little table by her, and rubbed her thumbs along his eyebrows. Everything she did to him was efficient, but, thankfully, gentle. Not many people touched his face. It felt odd.

He thought about other things.

Like Daniel. Who was missing this, the way he’d be missing everything, forever. And Timothy, whose father hadn’t lived to see the day his son had been arrested on murder charges. Of course, Tim was already home with his family and their powerful lawyers around him. Sherlock couldn’t square that: how the judge had allowed Tim out on bail. Thinking about it made him… uncomfortable.

So he didn’t think about it.

He thought about… the contracts that Daniel Farrar had made with seven children. Forgotten in his room on cardstock tags were the names of kids from sundry charities. Sherlock had heard that Farrar’s mother had been by to pick up his things, and she’d left the tags behind. Daniel’s family was equally as poor as the charity kids, and, besides, they wouldn’t be out this way again. So Sherlock had secured Pamela’s cooperation.

Pamela had the list in her black-velvet wallet and Sherlock had supplied money. They would see that the final contracts of Farrar’s were honoured. With Tim already out of jail for his murder, this was the only other thing Sherlock could think to do for Daniel. After all, like Daniel, Sherlock had been in the icy arms of the Cam, and he’d also been attacked by Murray-Heath, though he hadn’t told a soul the particulars of that clash. He didn’t talk about it. Instead, Sherlock coldly, stubbornly clung to Daniel’s final obligations.

“Oh. All right, luv?”

“What?”

Instead of saying more, the make-up artist before him pulled a tissue she daubed below his pale eyes. Her face set, she selected a brush she tapped into white powder and carefully swept along his skin. “Stress, I’m sure.” she said and carried on, without ado, like a proper Englishwoman.

Stress.

When she was done, he picked up his violin and caught his reflection in a glass. Still his stone face, with the same green eyes sapped of colour, only with skin that was somehow flatter, and somehow gauzy. He sighed and went to warm up in the back. As he approached the stairs leading to the catwalks Sherlock had to force the memory of leaping from the second-floor window and creeping along the broad outer wall of the Concert Hall, now inextricable from his use of the same technique to evade Tim, from his mind. He wished it would just go away. But things he witnessed were forever sealed in the amber of time.

He felt entirely deadened as he began warm-up. Gradually, the exercise of playing - he’d chosen Sibelius - began to loosen the nuts and bolts inside of him and pry up the boards to the smoking ruin of anger and betrayal underneath.

Concludes in Part 13.