[fic: bbc sherlock] thegameison_sh, Cycle Two
All of these were written for thegameison_sh 's second cycle of competition. The pieces aren't related in any way. Specific warnings will be included in specific author's notes.
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Title: Mother of Pearl
Rating: PG
Summary: Yao Soo-Lin, (whose family name means ‘mother-of-pearl,’ whose first name means nothing at all,) is blessed with one thousand memories, each one round and smooth within her mind. The one which glows brightest is from when she is seven years old, and it glows like this...
Author's Notes: Theme: 'Love'
Yao Soo-Lin, (whose family name means ‘mother-of-pearl,’ whose first name means nothing at all,) is blessed with one thousand memories, each one round and smooth within her mind. The one which glows brightest is from when she is seven years old, and it glows like this:
She is curled into a knot of dark skin and black hair at the bottom of her mother’s laundry bucket. Hot water steams around her, and more is boiling on the stove. Nearby her mother stands, one teapot in each hand, a concerned expression on her face.
Soo-Lin has a head cold that is stubbornly refusing to go away.
“Do you feel better?” her mother asks her.
Soo-Lin shakes her head. Her mother walks over slowly and kneels, before tipping one teapot so that it pours over the other, amber liquid dribbling into the laundry bucket.
“Mò-lì-huā,” she says she pours. “Jasmine.” The aroma rises and clears Soo-Lin’s sinuses, brightens her eyes. She feels the ache leave her temples and leans back with a smile.
At the door, her brother stands, curious.
“Wait outside,” their mother orders.
Later, Soo-Lin rises from her tea bath, a few stray jasmine flowers stuck to her skin. Her mother drapes a blanket over her bony shoulders, and Soo-Lin pads out to find her brother seated in the kitchen, poking at spiders with a stick.
“Are you alright?” he murmurs, eyes fixed on his prey and their webs.
“I’m alright,” she says, pulling a flower from her arm and sticking it to her brother’s cheek.
Their mother dies when Soo-Lin is fifteen and her brother is twelve, and they end up on the streets. Work isn’t hard to find for girls, but Soo-Lin is too strong of will and refuses. There are other ways. She keeps her hands on her brother’s shoulders and continues to search.
The Tong recruits them within a two-month. Children are small and quick; children see what others don’t; children are told what others aren’t. The bosses like the look of Soo-Lin-she is pretty with a sweet tilt to her eyes and lips-but they don’t like her brother.
“His hands are too small-what can he carry?” they say.
“If he goes, I go,” she replies.
That night she and her brother sleep in a bed for the first time in weeks, her nose buried in his hair.
“I won’t ever leave you,” she promises.
“Good,” he says, spreading his fingers out against the sheets, willing them to grow.
She loses her use in a matter of years, when her bosses want her to take more than just drugs. Stolen artifacts, pinched from graves-jade jewelery, bone combs. Soo-Lin feels like she is handing her children away.
“Just things,” her brother says. He is still short, his hands still small, but these things no longer work against him. He is their acrobat, their spider. He comes home only once a week, smelling of a women and alcohol. He wants fast cars, clothes from Europe, shoes from America.
The bosses now want Soo-Lin to stop smuggling. They want her to be their pet, to bed her and pay her trinkets. And so, one evening, when she is eighteen, Soo-Lin brings one last package over the border to Hong Kong-a small crate of antique teapots. She keeps two, wraps them carefully, leaving the rest at the dropoff.
Then she disappears, and breaks her promise.
The pots she stole pay her way to England. She feels guilty about it, the memory hard and painful, even works in the museum to fix what she has broken, her days unchanging, her labor one of love.
Her brother comes on a rainy night in winter. He is older, with many lines on his face, the sight of him both welcome and terrifying. He asks her what he has come to ask her in the voice of a stranger.
“No,” she says.
After he leaves, she makes herself jasmine tea in a pot of plain, white porcelain. She drinks and watches the rain come down, her memories spinning within her head like pearls alongside her brother’s words.
“You left me. You betrayed me.”
Soo-Lin replied, “Still, I love you,” even though she has done both these things.
The night she dies, Soo-Lin leaves the basement door unbolted for a reason. Her brother crawls in like a spider, or a ghost, or a memory.
She goes with his gun to her head, and her hand on his cheek.
Title: The Concert
Rating: G
Summary: Sherlock Holmes was never destined to be a concert violinist from the start.
Author's Notes: Theme: 'Older/Younger'
Sherlock’s grand début took place when he was twelve years old, in a hall which has since decayed, with an orchestra which has since disbanded. But then and there, they glittered.
“Dodici?” said the conductor, whose hand folded around Sherlock’s like a warm, gelatinous glove. “Che maraviglia.”
“We’re all terribly proud.” Mrs. Holmes inspected the delicate watch on her delicate wrist, and let her fingers ghost over her son’s shoulder. He could smell nothing but her perfume, and the faint odor of rosin. Before him, the plump conductor, whose mouth and eyes were smiling.
“Could you tell me,” the man asked, leaning down ever so slightly, “why you chose Prokofiev? An old man’s curiosity. Most…”
Sherlock shrugged, and folded his teeth over his lip. If he’d had his druthers, he wouldn’t be playing at all.
“Ahl I see! But you are not most, eh? You like a challenge, you want to stand out?” The conductor laughed warmly. Sherlock noted the light scuff marks on his shoes-walker-and the spatulate fingertips-pianist-and the accent-Piedmont. Finally comfortable in this state of all knowing, Sherlock allowed himself to smile and tip his head downwards.
“Doesn’t everyone, maestro?”
The night of the concert, Mycroft found him in the dressing room, elbow deep in warm water, fingers turning spongy.
“Come in.”
“They’ve just finished the Paganini.” The room was silent, save for an occasional rippling of water. Sherlock’s violin sat patiently on the couch. “Are you ready?”
Sherlock’s reply was to slide a little lower in his seat, and narrow his eyes.
“Play to the scroll-don’t move so much-”
“Get back to your seat,” Sherlock said. He pulled his arms from the tub, dripping water all over his trousers, and stood, reaching for his jacket.
“Couldn’t possibly. A humongous thing of a woman is blocking my row.”
“Tell her to move.”
“Common courtesy prevails.” Mycroft took his pocketwatch out, made a grand show of checking the time, and replaced it with a sniff. “Two minutes.”
“I’m aware.” Sherlock straightened his jacket with a few economical tugs of the collar, and wiped his hands on the scratchy fabric of the couch. His hair was uncharacteristically tidy and his eyes unusually still.
Mycroft held back a start, opting to tilt his head subtly to one side and murmur, “Ah, you aren’t nervous are you?”
“Of course I’m not,” Sherlock said, all too quickly, before lifting his violin to his chin and gesturing towards the little upright in the corner of the room. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
“This is quite surprising. Surely you enjoy being the center of attention.”
There was silence, until Mycroft heaved a sigh and stepped to the piano, depressing middle A.
Sherlock dragged his bow across the string, lips pursed into a rigid line.
The orchestra-one hundred piece, gargantuan, a golden monster-smiled at him as he stepped on stage, the neck of his violin crushed beneath his fingers. He bowed with wide eyes, head beginning to throb.
White oak, it screamed, as he stared at the wood beneath his feet. And then, Sleeping with each other when his eyes swept over the frontmost two cellists. Then to his left, the violinists, Stradivarius; Vuillame; factory-made; third chair down with grippe; shoes scuffed; smoker; drinker; dying; pregnant; newlywed-
“Breathe,” the conductor murmured, arms raised, expression worried.
Sherlock’s breath came in great, shuddering gasps. He stared out the audience as he lifted his instrument to his chin, the white noise within his skull shrieking, overriding the music. Here, this, this, analyze, analyze, comprehend.
The maestro was growing antsy; low murmurings came from the crowd. All Sherlock heard, however, was the dull roar churning behind his eyeballs.
He let the bow fall from his hand with a clatter, before charging from the stage.
“I did tell you.”
She hadn’t told him anything of the sort, but Sherlock didn’t care. He was curled in the backseat of the car with his violin case resting on his knees, watching the lights go by as his cheeks burned.
There’d been a drawn-out apology on stage, and some breaking-of-things in the dressing room. Mycroft had rescued the violin bow from destruction, thank goodness. He fiddled with it in the car, pulling the loose horsehairs off.
“It happens,” he murmured.
“It shouldn’t.”
“Perhaps one day you’ll learn.”
“And you’ll teach me?” Sherlock sneered.
Mycroft dipped his head slowly, and brought himself to smile. “You will come into your own,” he said, leaving it at that.
Title: Out From the Cave
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Jim conducts an interview.
Author's Notes: Image Prompt; warnings: off-handed attitude towards children; very brief mention of physical child abuse; off-screen execution of an adult
The photograph is crumpled and creased, overused and over-loved. He turns it in his hands, front to back to front again, little faces revolving with a crinkled whiteness.
“How old?”
“T-ten. They’re ten, now.”
“I didn’t ask about now. How old are they in the picture?” Soft paper. Looked at often. The girl’s hair has been touched-dozens of times. And the boy, his face, his eyes, traced and retraced by heavy fingers.
“Five, I think. Yeah, five.”
He looks up at the man seated across from him. A bloodied face, three teeth knocked out, arms tied. A human being in its last moments of life. Gather ‘round, children, this is how a homo sapiens dies. Not in silence, like the stories say. Not willingly.
Watch it struggle. Watch it fight.
Jim brings the paper to his lips, to his nose; he breathes in its smell. Asks, “Why are you showing me this?”
The man shudders. “I wanted,” he says. “I wanted you… to see… what I’d leave… My kids, my kids, Mr. Moriarty, they’re all I have… I…”
“Hm. You set a strange example for your children, Leehan, running arms for a man like me.” Jim licks his lips. “Tell me their names.”
Leehan hesitates. “What’ll you do to them?”
Jim smiles, showing every single one of his teeth. “Oh, that doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me!”
“No need to raise your voice, dearie. And no need to worry either-I don’t like children. I don’t associate with them. But… do tell me their names.”
Leehan whispers them softly, like prayers. Jim blinks and gets to his feet, re-examining the photograph. “Well, they’re cute, aren’t they?” he murmurs. “You must be quite the proud daddy… Are you raising your son to be like you? A Judas and a criminal?”
“Leave ‘em out, leave ‘em out…”
“I wasn’t the one who let them in.” Jim lifts the paper to the light, and runs his fingers over the lit up faces. Little, and vulnerable, and afraid.
Everything he hates, everything he has run from.
“I don’t understand the attachment,” he murmurs. “Surely we as a race have moved past our biology by now. Our self-righteous sense of ownership. Have you ever hit your boy before? No, of course you haven’t. You’re a good pappy. Never come home drunk, never take the switch off the wall?”
“Please… Please, I love my children, I just want to see them again-”
“Why? Why do you want to see them again? Why would you ever…” Jim stops, gritting his teeth. He can feel the paper crinkling in his palm; he’s angry; he shouldn’t be angry.
He collects himself.
“Your son will be better off without you,” he announces. In the shadows, there is movement; behind him, Leehan struggles. “Sebastian?”
A click rings through the darkness, followed shortly by a brief, cold, “Yes.”
“Make it a quick one.”
~
There are lights, a night sky, and a warm cloud of tobacco smoke. Sebastian is wiping the red spray from his hands.
Jim has the photo balanced on one knee. He smoothes it out slowly, watching the faces distort.
“Weren’t we one short of five, last I checked?” he murmurs.
“Yeah.”
“Add another name to the list. Pair it up with the painting.” Jim looks down, strokes his thumb over the paper, smiles. “Little boys do love to stargaze.”
Title: The Empty House
Rating: G
Summary: After three years on the run, Sherlock Holmes returns to nothing at all.
Author's Notes: This was my original entry for April, and was meant to incorporate this picture. However, it only mentioned the image in passing, and so I felt it would be disqualified. Still, it was written and I've decided to put it up anyhow. It's longer than it was initially, and looking back it's not particularly coherent, but I always did mean for it to be a mood piece.
Three years on the run. His hair smells of dried sweat and dirt and too much sunshine. He wants nothing more than asphalt and steel back beneath his feet.
Sick of moving.
The phone is hot and sticky against his face, and the booth smells like piss.
His thumb stamps down the buttons. He listens to the ring.
Click.
“I need somewhere to stay.” No time for hellos.
There is a cough, and a rattling sigh. “I’ve nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Then I don’t understand why you bother asking if you already know-”
“Your stupid ‘security system.’” He grits his teeth, runs his hand through his filthy hair. “I’ve neither the hours nor the patience to get around it myself.”
He can very nearly hear his brother’s smile on the other end. “Very well. I’ll have them leave some food for you-anything to aid and abet your silly little gam-”
Sherlock slams the phone down and barges out the booth, not even bothering to stay for the change. There’s a piece of road to go down yet, and the sun is getting low.
The house stands like a bared skeleton for all the world to see, run-down and over-grown. Mycroft tells him that there’s a groundskeeper still on the payroll, but Sherlock has his doubts.
He walks up the drive he wishes would cease to be familiar, a leech on his memory that refuses to leave for all his efforts towards deletion. Three nights-three nights, and then surely it’ll be safe for him to fly.
Sherlock stands before the front door, breathing. He tests the handle; it is not locked. In the back of his head, he can hear his brother, voice low and regretful; It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? Welcome home, all the same.
He steps inside on unsure feet.
The first night is spent in his childhood bedroom. Everything is coated in a layer of dust, none of the plumbing works, the kitchen has only rats and ancient crumbs. The furniture has white sheets draped over it, all the mirrors are covered-ghostly, dead. Mycroft treats this house like he treats everything else of personal value to him. He insists on holding it, hoarding it, but he cannot bring himself to take care of it.
Sherlock twists on his bare bed. No sheets, no pillows, nothing but a mattress and creaky springs.
The sky is moonless. He can hear water in his ears, a dull roar. He can hear someone calling his name.
In the morning, he wanders the corridors with his hands tracing the molding on the walls. He visits his brother’s room, inspecting the emptiness, listening to his own footsteps.
Sherlock dimly remembers leaving this place.
When he calls Mycroft again, checking in, he does it almost shamefacedly.
“Shouldn’t have returned. God, I shouldn’t have.”
“Why did you come home?”
“Don’t know. I don’t… know. I thought I could fix it.” He breathes inwards, and the air is shaky in his mouth. “I thought I could come alive.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
For once in his life, Sherlock thinks his brother’s voice has a hint of kindness in it. A hint of kindness, a touch of pity. He turns the mobile off and chucks it out the nearest window, onto the wild, untrimmed green.
There are crickets chirping, and lightning bugs fluttering about. Sherlock thinks of the city. “John,” he tells the creaking floor. “John.”
Once, when he was little-very little, below his father’s hip still, little enough to get lost in tall grass-Sherlock ran away for all of twelve hours. He spent them wandering the woods, collecting insects in jars, dipping his feet in the stream. The summer day had been glorious and warm. He’d chased a Hesperia comma for what felt like miles, collapsing of exhaustion come sundown, letting the lightning bugs swarm over him.
His brother had found him that evening, and taken him back, and told him never to do it again, looking smug.
This is not so different a homecoming.
He spends the third day inside, angry at everything, breaking bathroom mirrors and listening to himself scream. There is blood on his hands, running down the sides of the sink and into the puddled water; he still remembers the taste of Swiss rain on his tongue and the Aar beneath his skin; he cups his ears against the shouts.
Come back, come back, but he can’t, he can’t.
Could be dangerous.
Oh, it always has been.
If only you hadn’t gone and fallen in love, you idiot.
In the morning there’s a knock on the front door.
Sherlock answers carefully, peeping around a thin crack. “Yes?” he says.
A little old man is on the other side. “Mornin’,” he grunts, and he tips his hat. “I’ve a message for you.” He passes a neat little envelope over.
“Who’s it from?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know, would I?” The old man smiles, and winks. “Good day.”
Sherlock places the envelope into his pocket. “Who are you?”
“The gardener!” the old man calls, from down he front path.
You’ve always been a fool when it counted, dear brother, and I’ve always considered it among my fraternal duties to point these (admittedly rare) occurrences out as they come. One cannot waver forever, after all.
I’ve included an article that may be of interest to you. A trivial affair worth noting.
I trust you’ve heard of the Honorable Ronald Adair before?
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Title: Mother of Pearl
Rating: PG
Summary: Yao Soo-Lin, (whose family name means ‘mother-of-pearl,’ whose first name means nothing at all,) is blessed with one thousand memories, each one round and smooth within her mind. The one which glows brightest is from when she is seven years old, and it glows like this...
Author's Notes: Theme: 'Love'
Yao Soo-Lin, (whose family name means ‘mother-of-pearl,’ whose first name means nothing at all,) is blessed with one thousand memories, each one round and smooth within her mind. The one which glows brightest is from when she is seven years old, and it glows like this:
She is curled into a knot of dark skin and black hair at the bottom of her mother’s laundry bucket. Hot water steams around her, and more is boiling on the stove. Nearby her mother stands, one teapot in each hand, a concerned expression on her face.
Soo-Lin has a head cold that is stubbornly refusing to go away.
“Do you feel better?” her mother asks her.
Soo-Lin shakes her head. Her mother walks over slowly and kneels, before tipping one teapot so that it pours over the other, amber liquid dribbling into the laundry bucket.
“Mò-lì-huā,” she says she pours. “Jasmine.” The aroma rises and clears Soo-Lin’s sinuses, brightens her eyes. She feels the ache leave her temples and leans back with a smile.
At the door, her brother stands, curious.
“Wait outside,” their mother orders.
Later, Soo-Lin rises from her tea bath, a few stray jasmine flowers stuck to her skin. Her mother drapes a blanket over her bony shoulders, and Soo-Lin pads out to find her brother seated in the kitchen, poking at spiders with a stick.
“Are you alright?” he murmurs, eyes fixed on his prey and their webs.
“I’m alright,” she says, pulling a flower from her arm and sticking it to her brother’s cheek.
Their mother dies when Soo-Lin is fifteen and her brother is twelve, and they end up on the streets. Work isn’t hard to find for girls, but Soo-Lin is too strong of will and refuses. There are other ways. She keeps her hands on her brother’s shoulders and continues to search.
The Tong recruits them within a two-month. Children are small and quick; children see what others don’t; children are told what others aren’t. The bosses like the look of Soo-Lin-she is pretty with a sweet tilt to her eyes and lips-but they don’t like her brother.
“His hands are too small-what can he carry?” they say.
“If he goes, I go,” she replies.
That night she and her brother sleep in a bed for the first time in weeks, her nose buried in his hair.
“I won’t ever leave you,” she promises.
“Good,” he says, spreading his fingers out against the sheets, willing them to grow.
She loses her use in a matter of years, when her bosses want her to take more than just drugs. Stolen artifacts, pinched from graves-jade jewelery, bone combs. Soo-Lin feels like she is handing her children away.
“Just things,” her brother says. He is still short, his hands still small, but these things no longer work against him. He is their acrobat, their spider. He comes home only once a week, smelling of a women and alcohol. He wants fast cars, clothes from Europe, shoes from America.
The bosses now want Soo-Lin to stop smuggling. They want her to be their pet, to bed her and pay her trinkets. And so, one evening, when she is eighteen, Soo-Lin brings one last package over the border to Hong Kong-a small crate of antique teapots. She keeps two, wraps them carefully, leaving the rest at the dropoff.
Then she disappears, and breaks her promise.
The pots she stole pay her way to England. She feels guilty about it, the memory hard and painful, even works in the museum to fix what she has broken, her days unchanging, her labor one of love.
Her brother comes on a rainy night in winter. He is older, with many lines on his face, the sight of him both welcome and terrifying. He asks her what he has come to ask her in the voice of a stranger.
“No,” she says.
After he leaves, she makes herself jasmine tea in a pot of plain, white porcelain. She drinks and watches the rain come down, her memories spinning within her head like pearls alongside her brother’s words.
“You left me. You betrayed me.”
Soo-Lin replied, “Still, I love you,” even though she has done both these things.
The night she dies, Soo-Lin leaves the basement door unbolted for a reason. Her brother crawls in like a spider, or a ghost, or a memory.
She goes with his gun to her head, and her hand on his cheek.
Title: The Concert
Rating: G
Summary: Sherlock Holmes was never destined to be a concert violinist from the start.
Author's Notes: Theme: 'Older/Younger'
Sherlock’s grand début took place when he was twelve years old, in a hall which has since decayed, with an orchestra which has since disbanded. But then and there, they glittered.
“Dodici?” said the conductor, whose hand folded around Sherlock’s like a warm, gelatinous glove. “Che maraviglia.”
“We’re all terribly proud.” Mrs. Holmes inspected the delicate watch on her delicate wrist, and let her fingers ghost over her son’s shoulder. He could smell nothing but her perfume, and the faint odor of rosin. Before him, the plump conductor, whose mouth and eyes were smiling.
“Could you tell me,” the man asked, leaning down ever so slightly, “why you chose Prokofiev? An old man’s curiosity. Most…”
Sherlock shrugged, and folded his teeth over his lip. If he’d had his druthers, he wouldn’t be playing at all.
“Ahl I see! But you are not most, eh? You like a challenge, you want to stand out?” The conductor laughed warmly. Sherlock noted the light scuff marks on his shoes-walker-and the spatulate fingertips-pianist-and the accent-Piedmont. Finally comfortable in this state of all knowing, Sherlock allowed himself to smile and tip his head downwards.
“Doesn’t everyone, maestro?”
The night of the concert, Mycroft found him in the dressing room, elbow deep in warm water, fingers turning spongy.
“Come in.”
“They’ve just finished the Paganini.” The room was silent, save for an occasional rippling of water. Sherlock’s violin sat patiently on the couch. “Are you ready?”
Sherlock’s reply was to slide a little lower in his seat, and narrow his eyes.
“Play to the scroll-don’t move so much-”
“Get back to your seat,” Sherlock said. He pulled his arms from the tub, dripping water all over his trousers, and stood, reaching for his jacket.
“Couldn’t possibly. A humongous thing of a woman is blocking my row.”
“Tell her to move.”
“Common courtesy prevails.” Mycroft took his pocketwatch out, made a grand show of checking the time, and replaced it with a sniff. “Two minutes.”
“I’m aware.” Sherlock straightened his jacket with a few economical tugs of the collar, and wiped his hands on the scratchy fabric of the couch. His hair was uncharacteristically tidy and his eyes unusually still.
Mycroft held back a start, opting to tilt his head subtly to one side and murmur, “Ah, you aren’t nervous are you?”
“Of course I’m not,” Sherlock said, all too quickly, before lifting his violin to his chin and gesturing towards the little upright in the corner of the room. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
“This is quite surprising. Surely you enjoy being the center of attention.”
There was silence, until Mycroft heaved a sigh and stepped to the piano, depressing middle A.
Sherlock dragged his bow across the string, lips pursed into a rigid line.
The orchestra-one hundred piece, gargantuan, a golden monster-smiled at him as he stepped on stage, the neck of his violin crushed beneath his fingers. He bowed with wide eyes, head beginning to throb.
White oak, it screamed, as he stared at the wood beneath his feet. And then, Sleeping with each other when his eyes swept over the frontmost two cellists. Then to his left, the violinists, Stradivarius; Vuillame; factory-made; third chair down with grippe; shoes scuffed; smoker; drinker; dying; pregnant; newlywed-
“Breathe,” the conductor murmured, arms raised, expression worried.
Sherlock’s breath came in great, shuddering gasps. He stared out the audience as he lifted his instrument to his chin, the white noise within his skull shrieking, overriding the music. Here, this, this, analyze, analyze, comprehend.
The maestro was growing antsy; low murmurings came from the crowd. All Sherlock heard, however, was the dull roar churning behind his eyeballs.
He let the bow fall from his hand with a clatter, before charging from the stage.
“I did tell you.”
She hadn’t told him anything of the sort, but Sherlock didn’t care. He was curled in the backseat of the car with his violin case resting on his knees, watching the lights go by as his cheeks burned.
There’d been a drawn-out apology on stage, and some breaking-of-things in the dressing room. Mycroft had rescued the violin bow from destruction, thank goodness. He fiddled with it in the car, pulling the loose horsehairs off.
“It happens,” he murmured.
“It shouldn’t.”
“Perhaps one day you’ll learn.”
“And you’ll teach me?” Sherlock sneered.
Mycroft dipped his head slowly, and brought himself to smile. “You will come into your own,” he said, leaving it at that.
Title: Out From the Cave
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Jim conducts an interview.
Author's Notes: Image Prompt; warnings: off-handed attitude towards children; very brief mention of physical child abuse; off-screen execution of an adult
The photograph is crumpled and creased, overused and over-loved. He turns it in his hands, front to back to front again, little faces revolving with a crinkled whiteness.
“How old?”
“T-ten. They’re ten, now.”
“I didn’t ask about now. How old are they in the picture?” Soft paper. Looked at often. The girl’s hair has been touched-dozens of times. And the boy, his face, his eyes, traced and retraced by heavy fingers.
“Five, I think. Yeah, five.”
He looks up at the man seated across from him. A bloodied face, three teeth knocked out, arms tied. A human being in its last moments of life. Gather ‘round, children, this is how a homo sapiens dies. Not in silence, like the stories say. Not willingly.
Watch it struggle. Watch it fight.
Jim brings the paper to his lips, to his nose; he breathes in its smell. Asks, “Why are you showing me this?”
The man shudders. “I wanted,” he says. “I wanted you… to see… what I’d leave… My kids, my kids, Mr. Moriarty, they’re all I have… I…”
“Hm. You set a strange example for your children, Leehan, running arms for a man like me.” Jim licks his lips. “Tell me their names.”
Leehan hesitates. “What’ll you do to them?”
Jim smiles, showing every single one of his teeth. “Oh, that doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me!”
“No need to raise your voice, dearie. And no need to worry either-I don’t like children. I don’t associate with them. But… do tell me their names.”
Leehan whispers them softly, like prayers. Jim blinks and gets to his feet, re-examining the photograph. “Well, they’re cute, aren’t they?” he murmurs. “You must be quite the proud daddy… Are you raising your son to be like you? A Judas and a criminal?”
“Leave ‘em out, leave ‘em out…”
“I wasn’t the one who let them in.” Jim lifts the paper to the light, and runs his fingers over the lit up faces. Little, and vulnerable, and afraid.
Everything he hates, everything he has run from.
“I don’t understand the attachment,” he murmurs. “Surely we as a race have moved past our biology by now. Our self-righteous sense of ownership. Have you ever hit your boy before? No, of course you haven’t. You’re a good pappy. Never come home drunk, never take the switch off the wall?”
“Please… Please, I love my children, I just want to see them again-”
“Why? Why do you want to see them again? Why would you ever…” Jim stops, gritting his teeth. He can feel the paper crinkling in his palm; he’s angry; he shouldn’t be angry.
He collects himself.
“Your son will be better off without you,” he announces. In the shadows, there is movement; behind him, Leehan struggles. “Sebastian?”
A click rings through the darkness, followed shortly by a brief, cold, “Yes.”
“Make it a quick one.”
~
There are lights, a night sky, and a warm cloud of tobacco smoke. Sebastian is wiping the red spray from his hands.
Jim has the photo balanced on one knee. He smoothes it out slowly, watching the faces distort.
“Weren’t we one short of five, last I checked?” he murmurs.
“Yeah.”
“Add another name to the list. Pair it up with the painting.” Jim looks down, strokes his thumb over the paper, smiles. “Little boys do love to stargaze.”
Title: The Empty House
Rating: G
Summary: After three years on the run, Sherlock Holmes returns to nothing at all.
Author's Notes: This was my original entry for April, and was meant to incorporate this picture. However, it only mentioned the image in passing, and so I felt it would be disqualified. Still, it was written and I've decided to put it up anyhow. It's longer than it was initially, and looking back it's not particularly coherent, but I always did mean for it to be a mood piece.
Three years on the run. His hair smells of dried sweat and dirt and too much sunshine. He wants nothing more than asphalt and steel back beneath his feet.
Sick of moving.
The phone is hot and sticky against his face, and the booth smells like piss.
His thumb stamps down the buttons. He listens to the ring.
Click.
“I need somewhere to stay.” No time for hellos.
There is a cough, and a rattling sigh. “I’ve nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Then I don’t understand why you bother asking if you already know-”
“Your stupid ‘security system.’” He grits his teeth, runs his hand through his filthy hair. “I’ve neither the hours nor the patience to get around it myself.”
He can very nearly hear his brother’s smile on the other end. “Very well. I’ll have them leave some food for you-anything to aid and abet your silly little gam-”
Sherlock slams the phone down and barges out the booth, not even bothering to stay for the change. There’s a piece of road to go down yet, and the sun is getting low.
The house stands like a bared skeleton for all the world to see, run-down and over-grown. Mycroft tells him that there’s a groundskeeper still on the payroll, but Sherlock has his doubts.
He walks up the drive he wishes would cease to be familiar, a leech on his memory that refuses to leave for all his efforts towards deletion. Three nights-three nights, and then surely it’ll be safe for him to fly.
Sherlock stands before the front door, breathing. He tests the handle; it is not locked. In the back of his head, he can hear his brother, voice low and regretful; It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? Welcome home, all the same.
He steps inside on unsure feet.
The first night is spent in his childhood bedroom. Everything is coated in a layer of dust, none of the plumbing works, the kitchen has only rats and ancient crumbs. The furniture has white sheets draped over it, all the mirrors are covered-ghostly, dead. Mycroft treats this house like he treats everything else of personal value to him. He insists on holding it, hoarding it, but he cannot bring himself to take care of it.
Sherlock twists on his bare bed. No sheets, no pillows, nothing but a mattress and creaky springs.
The sky is moonless. He can hear water in his ears, a dull roar. He can hear someone calling his name.
In the morning, he wanders the corridors with his hands tracing the molding on the walls. He visits his brother’s room, inspecting the emptiness, listening to his own footsteps.
Sherlock dimly remembers leaving this place.
When he calls Mycroft again, checking in, he does it almost shamefacedly.
“Shouldn’t have returned. God, I shouldn’t have.”
“Why did you come home?”
“Don’t know. I don’t… know. I thought I could fix it.” He breathes inwards, and the air is shaky in his mouth. “I thought I could come alive.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
For once in his life, Sherlock thinks his brother’s voice has a hint of kindness in it. A hint of kindness, a touch of pity. He turns the mobile off and chucks it out the nearest window, onto the wild, untrimmed green.
There are crickets chirping, and lightning bugs fluttering about. Sherlock thinks of the city. “John,” he tells the creaking floor. “John.”
Once, when he was little-very little, below his father’s hip still, little enough to get lost in tall grass-Sherlock ran away for all of twelve hours. He spent them wandering the woods, collecting insects in jars, dipping his feet in the stream. The summer day had been glorious and warm. He’d chased a Hesperia comma for what felt like miles, collapsing of exhaustion come sundown, letting the lightning bugs swarm over him.
His brother had found him that evening, and taken him back, and told him never to do it again, looking smug.
This is not so different a homecoming.
He spends the third day inside, angry at everything, breaking bathroom mirrors and listening to himself scream. There is blood on his hands, running down the sides of the sink and into the puddled water; he still remembers the taste of Swiss rain on his tongue and the Aar beneath his skin; he cups his ears against the shouts.
Come back, come back, but he can’t, he can’t.
Could be dangerous.
Oh, it always has been.
If only you hadn’t gone and fallen in love, you idiot.
In the morning there’s a knock on the front door.
Sherlock answers carefully, peeping around a thin crack. “Yes?” he says.
A little old man is on the other side. “Mornin’,” he grunts, and he tips his hat. “I’ve a message for you.” He passes a neat little envelope over.
“Who’s it from?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know, would I?” The old man smiles, and winks. “Good day.”
Sherlock places the envelope into his pocket. “Who are you?”
“The gardener!” the old man calls, from down he front path.
You’ve always been a fool when it counted, dear brother, and I’ve always considered it among my fraternal duties to point these (admittedly rare) occurrences out as they come. One cannot waver forever, after all.
I’ve included an article that may be of interest to you. A trivial affair worth noting.
I trust you’ve heard of the Honorable Ronald Adair before?