Sherlock Fanfiction: This First Summer Month That Brings the Rose
Title: This First Summer Month That Brings the Rose
Author: saki101
Characters/Pairings: John Watson/Sherlock Holmes, James Moriarty, Mycroft Holmes, Gregory Lestrade, Molly Hooper, Mrs Hudson
Rating: PG-13
Genre: slash
Word Count: ~3.7K
Disclaimer: Sherlock is not mine and no money is being made.
Summary: Sherlock and Moriarty never meet on the rooftop at Bart's.
A/N: A stand-alone AU, predominantly of the Sherlock universe, but with a pinch of ACD, written for the Spook-Me Multi-Fandom Halloween Ficathon 2014 in response to the prompt: witch/wizard.
(Also, on AO3.)
Excerpt: There are roses guarding the verandah. I can smell them through the open windows. They have sharp claws and drink the sun.
This First Summer Month That Brings the Rose
There was pain
Red
And sharp
And white around the edges
And then there was darkness.
***
The sounds of pain surrounded me. Some of them were mine. When it was too much, the darkness came for me.
***
The sun in Peshawar overflowed. Molten, it entered through the cracks, slithering across my sheets, hot on the back of my hand.
It would jump from my bed to the wall. I couldn’t catch it. I would blink and it would disappear.
***
I am an animal again. I can move and catch the light. Slowly, I shuffle to the verandah and bask, storing up the energy to shuffle back.
There are roses guarding the verandah. I can smell them through the open windows. They have sharp claws and drink the sun.
***
I am fortunate, I know. I move my arm a little more each day. All my fingers bend and grasp. I write. I feed myself and my energy returns.
***
There is a garden beyond the verandah. The sheen of its foliage is dimmed by the dust in the air. The flowers blaze at noon, sweeten at twilight. I know only some of them. I am learning the names of others. There is jasmine not far from the roses. One of the nurses brought me a sprig of it. I wiped the dust from its leaves.
Sometimes I fall asleep on the verandah. I hope to walk in the garden soon.
***
Where the bullet had failed, the bacteria came much closer to succeeding. I shouldn’t have liked to live or practice medicine before antibiotics. Even now, the outcome isn’t certain. Tiny life forms, intent on their survival, mutating to find ways around our defences. They found ways around mine.
***
I burned to the scent of roses. Thorny stems reared up in my fever dreams to scourge the fiery demons that had come to consume me.
I had more defences than I realised.
***
I recovered again, a little more damaged, damaged enough to be discarded. Aimless, I limped through a city with an aloof sun and endured nightmares in a sterile hole without a whiff of a flower.
I withered.
My final defence gleamed from my desk drawer.
***
“John!”
A name many people shared.
“John Watson!”
I turned, squinted at the man beaming at me.
“Stamford. Mike Stamford, we were at Bart’s together,” he said.
***
My fever dreams followed me to Baker Street.
Sometimes, gunfire strafed the desert. I would wake in a sweat, scorched by the sun and shredded by screams.
Sometimes, a life ebbed away beneath my hands and I woke weeping.
But sometimes, a new dream came. Through its shadowy canyons a red-eyed beast stalked a dark-plumed bird and the only sound was the beating of wings. Then, I woke cold and barely breathing.
***
I went south of the river before sunrise and found what I wanted.
“Oh,” Mrs Hudson said when she saw what I’d planted by her kitchen door. “But they’ll grow,” she added hopefully.
“Yes,” I said. “They will.”
***
Sherlock eyed the bare, thorn-encrusted branches jutting from the urns on either side of the front steps.
“They’d make good weapons,” he said as he unlocked the door.
I stared at the barren pots. There was a tinge of green to the wood. “Yes,” I said. “They will.”
***
Sherlock.
I listened to what his breath said when not a word was uttered, to what his eyes said when they contradicted the words.
That was how he asked me not to change my mind and leave the first night. I answered with a bullet.
We had both smiled.
***
When we left the pool, the air was rank with algae.
***
For a moment, the blue lights threw leafy shadows across the room. I wished they had been green.
I leaned over Sherlock’s shoulder. His hand closed around the tiny camera he held and his computer screen went dark.
“I know you,” I whispered, my right arm firm across his chest. With the left, I sunk the thorn into his neck.
***
“Where is he?” Lestrade asked.
“Trying to escape?” a porcine man enquired, staring about the room, snout quivering.
“Check for yourself,” I said and gestured towards the bedroom.
***
They found Sherlock lying as I’d left him, composed and neat on his bed. His hands were folded on his chest, a half-opened rose clasped between them.
I’d opened the windows and the air was sweet with the blooms outside upon the walls.
Lestrade gaped at me.
“Offed himself, did he?” Donovan said. “I guess that proves it.”
Lestrade covered his mouth.
“Coward,” Donovan muttered.
The porcine man strolled in. “Is he dead?” he asked. “Save us some trouble if he is. Donovan, call for a doctor.”
“I’m a doctor,” I said. “Shall I check?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Maybe we should be arresting you,” he said.
“For being a doctor?” I enquired.
He turned to Donovan. “Is he? A doctor?”
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
“Go on, then,” he said. “We need an ambulance either way,” he added in Donovan’s direction.
She strode out of the room. With a sniff and a grimace, he ambled after her.
I reached beneath Sherlock’s collar, closed my eyes and counted. Slow and steady, his heart beat against my fingertips and I sighed.
“Is he?” Lestrade whispered, his voice hoarse.
I opened my eyes and looked at Lestrade. “He’ll be guarded, right?” I asked.
Lestrade nodded.
“Can you go with him? To Bart’s? I know they won’t let me.”
“I’ll try,” Lestrade said.
I walked over to the window and snapped off a rosebud. “Give him this when he wakes up.”
Lestrade took a deep breath and let me tuck the flower into his pocket. “You’re confident that he will?”
“Unless someone else gets to him, yes.”
Lestrade studied me. “You’re not planning something stupid, are you, John?”
“Stupider than this?” I asked, flinging out both my arms. “No.”
***
The flat was quiet. Sherlock gone with the flashing lights.
I picked up his phone, scrolled through the received messages and pushed reply: Come and play. Regent’s Park, Queen Mary’s Gardens, rose arbour. SH
***
The night was cool and bright.
I sat beneath the arbour, a bouquet of full-blown roses balanced on the arm of my bench. As I waited, some of their petals fell.
“Oh, I am so disappointed,” Moriarty said from the opposite side of the arbour. “What with the rose garden and the full moon in June and all…” He sauntered towards me, tearing petals off the blossoms along the path as he passed. “A boy could get his hopes up, you know.”
He stood before me.
“Expecting Sherlock and getting his pet.” Moriarty sat down, turning towards me. “I suppose Sherlock was indisposed.” He touched my shoulder. “Maybe permanently.” He smiled. “I won’t miss him. He’d become boring.”
I raised my eyebrows at that.
“That wouldn’t bother you, I know. You’ll miss him, won’t you? So loyal.” He stroked my arm. “I suppose that’s why he liked you.” He pulled his hand away, rubbed it over his face. “But so predictable. So very, very boring.”
“I’ve come to say good-bye,” I said.
He leaned closer, smoothed his hand down my thigh. “Is that why you brought me flowers?” he asked. “A farewell present?” He moved closer. “They look a little past their prime, but I suppose you had to pick them in a hurry, what with the police running in and out and the ambulance and everything.” He slid his hand to the inside of my thigh. “What is it with you and all the roses anyway? The place looks like…”
He sat back, eyes comically wide, hands to either side of his face. “Was that a tribute to me?" His gaze slipped from mine, settled on my hands. He tapped my knuckles. "Because I used fairy tales to flirt with your master?”
He got up and walked slowly around the bench, hand running along my shoulder, over the top of my head as he passed behind me, ruffling my hair. He gripped my arm when he was back in front and tugged me towards the middle of the bench.
“Johnny, Johnny, is it possible?” he asked. “It’s been so long, I’m not even sure I recognise the feeling.”
My outstretched arm was still steadying the flowers. He snatched them away, threw them into the air. Petals showered down on us as he knelt astride me, hands on either side of my face. “You’ve surprised me, Johnny boy.” He shook his head, his eyes wide and smiling. He slid all the way down to my lap and his eyes got even wider. He rotated his hips. “Oh, I underestimated him, Johnny. You aren’t ordinary at all.”
I smiled.
He jumped up, shouting. “You shouldn’t have killed him, then.” He stopped and looked down at me. “Even if it was for me,” he added softly.
He began to pace. “Is there any chance he’s not dead? Maybe they’ve resuscitated him. It's so hard to be really sure you’ve killed someone these days.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t have any problem with it.”
He turned. He spotted the gun pointing at him from my lap and laughed.
“That’s not a very professional grip there, Johnny boy,” he said.
I shrugged. “It’s fine. I can shoot from any angle.”
He wagged a finger at me. “Don’t get ordinary, Johnny. You were doing very well there.”
I clicked off the safety.
“Oh, Johnny. I was happy for a couple minutes.” He heaved a great sigh and snapped his fingers.
I didn’t even look down. I was sure several reds dots glowed on my body. “I could still get a shot through you before I go.”
He pursed his lips. “Not bad,” he admitted. “You may have earned back half a point, but, it’s not just the snipers I have with me here that are your problem.”
I tilted my head.
“I’ve got one trained on Mrs Hudson. They don’t hear from me tonight. Bang,” he said with expansive arm gestures.
“She’s old,” I replied.
“Lestrade,” he said. “Your good friend, who even warned you about the arrest tonight and everything.”
“Occupational hazard,” I said.
He nodded at me. “Your sister, Harry. I wasn’t going to overlook her. Blood is thicker than water, they say.”
“They haven’t met Harry,” I retorted. “She’s drinking herself to death anyway.”
He sat down. “I thought you were the soft-hearted one,” he said.
I snorted.
His hand moved towards his jacket pocket.
I lifted the gun a little.
“Just my phone,” he explained, “see.” He tugged the hem of his jacket. It was clear there was no gun in the pocket. “So I can call off my hitmen. For tonight.”
I shrugged.
“Better to save leverage for another day, besides I have to pay them per head, you know.”
He tapped a few buttons. Everyone on speed-dial apparently.
“There,” he said. “Now it’s just the two of us and our friends hiding in the bushes. What are you going to do to entertain me?”
“Well,” I said and watched as a red dot came into view on my thigh, swooped across Moriarty’s chest and up into the air. “How’s that?”
***
Molly was crying in the morgue. Quietly, amidst the empty tables.
“Where is he?” I said.
She shook her head, a sort of hiccupping sound coming out when she opened her mouth to answer.
I marched across the room. “No, no, Molly, listen: it will be all right,” I said and took her by the shoulders. “Remember what I told you and just tell me where he is.”
She sounded like she was choking. My eyes flew around the room. “Is he in one of the drawers?”
She shook her head again. “No,” she said and met my eyes. “I’m so sorry, John.”
I suddenly felt colder than the cool room required. “Oh, God. Was there an autopsy?”
Once more, she shook her head.
“Good, good,” I said.
“They wanted one," she answered, voice found. "I delayed the paperwork.”
I kissed her forehead. “You’re a miracle, Molly, but I have to see him now. Please.”
She drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders and pointed at the door to the quarantine room. “They couldn’t figure it out. There was nothing in his blood, but a trace of apigenin and alpha-bisabolol. Like he’d had a cup of chamomile before bed. But they couldn’t rouse him.”
“What did they try?” I called over my shoulder as I ran towards the door.
“Only physical stimulation. They were afraid of a drug reaction to something they couldn’t detect.”
I could hear her footsteps hurrying after me. The door was locked. “Could you?” I asked, glancing back at her, my fingers griping the top of the keypad.
Something hard knocked my hand away.
I turned.
“No,” Mycroft said.
“Not you,” I sighed.
“It’s usual to notify a family member,” he said.
“And why are you preventing me from seeing him?” I asked.
“I think you’ve done quite enough for my brother, Dr Watson,” Mycroft replied.
“No, I haven’t, but if you need something to keep you occupied, you might pop over to Regent’s Park, smell the roses, bring someone along to collect the snipers and other trash lying around.”
He lowered his brows the tiniest bit at me and reached for his phone.
“While you’re out and about, you might want to check on Mrs Hudson and give Lestrade a call. They both had at least one assassin assigned to them. My sister, Harry, too, apparently,” I said.
Somewhere on the Inner Circle, a traffic camera must have swivelled towards the rose garden because Mycroft’s eyebrows went way up.
“I thought you were supposed to see everything. Missed that bit, did you?” Beside me, I heard the keypad beep. Molly really is wonderful. I opened the door.
***
It clicked behind me as it closed. I didn’t bother with the lights, I could see enough. There was only one body bag.
Full of crumpled paper sheets.
I wheeled the table it was on into the shadows. “Sherlock?” I whispered.
“You drugged me,” he answered from a dark corner.
I snorted.
“Well.”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” I said.
“Which part?” he asked, coming out of the deepest shadows.
“You waking up on your own,” I said, observing how his skin reflected even the faint light from the other room. “How did you do it?”
He hesitated, came a little closer. “You surprised me when you stabbed me,” he said.
“I’m three for three at surprising geniuses tonight.”
“Oh?”
“Moriarty decided I killed you to attract his attention,” I replied.
His hand closed on my wrist like a vise. “And did you?” Sherlock asked.
I nodded. “Before the end there, I think he was getting ideas about a threesome and regretting your demise.”
“The end?” Sherlock hadn’t let go. His hand was very warm for someone standing nude in a chilly room.
I nodded again. “I left before the very end. I thought you needed reviving lest someone perform some medically inappropriate procedure on you.” I shrugged. “I suggested Mycroft go clean up. Perhaps he’ll send pictures.”
“He’s the third genius, then,” Sherlock said. “I don’t like you calling him a genius.”
“Well, he is nearly as smart as you are,” I said. “You outwit him often enough, but you have to work at it.”
“I dreamt you kissed me,” Sherlock said, so rapidly I almost missed it.
“What?”
“I’m fairly sure that’s why I woke. I was dreaming you were kissing me,” he replied.
I had to tilt my head further back to look him directly in the eye. “Where?” I asked.
“Geographically or anatomically?”
“Anatomically,” I clarified.
“On the mouth,” he replied. “Isn’t that the traditional fairy tale solution?” His head was bending lower.
I lifted the arm he held towards my lips. “I could have tried a variation,” I said and suckled the flesh at the base of his thumb.
He drew in a breath.
“And now we’ll never know if that would have worked,” I said, bringing the hand back to my mouth. He was flexing his grip on my arm in time to the movement of my tongue.
“But if I was lying flat with my arms by my sides, surely you would have chosen one of the first parts of me revealed when you unzipped the bag,” he reasoned.
“You dreamt you were in the morgue, when I kissed you?”
“No, we were at home as we always…” He interrupted himself.
I stroked my tongue along the base of his thumb, pressed my cheek to the back of his hand. “Always?” I asked. Time had been lost.
He stepped backwards and tugged me after him into the corner. He kept hold of my arm as he rose on his toes and sat on the edge of the table there. “Show me what you think you would have done,” he said and stretched out on the metal.
I bent over him. “You’ll have to let go,” I said.
His fingers loosened and slipped away.
I could barely see him; he was just a more solid darkness in the dark. My hand went to his neck and I exhaled. “It’s what I would have done first,” I said.
He didn’t reply.
“I shouldn’t have been able to find anything, if the machines hadn’t, but I would have checked.” I stroked up the side of his face, feeling the life beneath his jaw and at his temple. “I expected to find you in a room, not here. There would have been fear.”
There had been fear when I found Molly crying and she didn’t answer me.
He remained still.
My fingers traced along his arm, paused at the inside of his elbow and again at his wrist. “If you had been in a room, monitors thrumming faint and slow, there wouldn’t have been this fear.” I lowered my head to his chest, ear against his heart. My legs felt weak. It was a delayed reaction I was having. I curled one arm over his hip, stretched the other out until my fingers reached his hair. It worked. Not quite as planned, but it had worked. To the rhythm of his heartbeat, the words repeated. It worked. It worked. I dragged my hand away from his hip and nestled it in his groin. The beat there was very strong. I rubbed my thumb across it. It beat faster.
Reluctantly, I pulled my hand away, down his thigh and curved my fingers into the bend of his knee. His pulse was strong and rapid. I stood, stroked down to the ankle, paused, counted. Lightly, I kissed the top of his foot, let the skin pulse against my lips. The beast had not caught him, couldn’t hunt him anymore.
Straightening up again, I took off my jacket and rolled it. I felt my way back to his head, tucked the cloth under it and brushed the hair away from his forehead. I kissed him there.
“You were going to go away,” I said against his skin. “I felt it. Felt you pushing me, trying to anger me.” I leaned further over the table. “You thought you had to go alone.” I kissed his eyes. “You don’t.” I kissed his cheeks. “You think I can’t be ruthless,” I whispered, “I can.” When I finally kissed his mouth, his lips were already open.
***
The others had departed, Molly and Mrs Hudson and Harry among the last. It had been a discreet affair. Lestrade and Mycroft alone remained in front of the black stone with our two names and no dates.
“Initially, he wanted a duplicate of the one over there with the word dead cut through the stone,” Mycroft said.
“To the point,” Greg replied and took out a packet of cigarettes. “Mind?”
Mycroft waved his hand.
Greg held out the cigarettes. “Want one?”
Myrcroft sighed and reached for it.
“Let me,” Greg said and tapped out another. He lit them both and passed Mycroft one.
Mycroft eyed the rose pinned to Greg’s lapel. “Are you wearing one all the time now?”
Greg inhaled deeply and let out a long plume of smoke. “Pretty much.”
“You must get some remarks on that,” Mycroft said.
“Yeah, well, most of them think of it as a memento mori and have the decency to just shut it.”
“Even your sergeant?”
She’s already been promoted. Moving to Manchester end of the month,” Greg supplied. “Anything she has to say won’t be irritating me much longer.”
“I didn’t take you as either a sentimental or a superstitious man, Detective Inspector.”
“You saw the same thing I saw in the park,” Greg said. “And I’ve never seen a fresh corpse imbedded in a shrub before. The branch growing out of its mouth was especially grim. God, that look of surprise.” Greg gestured with his cigarette. “So what’s that on your suit jacket, then, Mr Holmes?”
Mycroft peered down his nose at the matching rose on his chest. “Sherlock left very specific instructions about the burial and the funeral, such as it was. I wouldn’t have imagined it was something he would have given so much thought.”
Greg looked up at the oak sapling spreading its spindly branches over the gravestone. “That’s a nice touch.”
Mycroft unpinned the rosebud from his lapel. He set it on top of the tombstone. “Shall we, Inspector?”
Greg bent down and pushed the packet of cigarettes into the fresh dirt at the base of the gravemarker. “I'm going to try to quit again,” he said and followed Mycroft away.
***
“I never expected to attend my own burial,” I said from behind the evergreen tree.
“I’m glad Lestrade didn’t dislodge the microphone when he made his vow of nicotine abstinence,” Sherlock grumbled.
“Nothing like a funeral to make one think about giving up smoking,” I said. I looked around. “How long until the others find out we aren’t dead?”
Sherlock turned to me. “Two, three years, I estimate. If we make it back at all.”
A breeze began to whisper through the leaves above us.
“You trying to discourage me?” I asked, pulling up the zip on my jacket.
Sherlock smiled as we headed down the hill. “No, I’m trying to make sure you don’t change your mind.”
***
Branches swayed. The rosebud dropped from the top of the tombstone onto the sapling’s dark soil. Fine roots burrowed. Rain fell.
One by one, the petals unfurled and from the thorny stem, shoots erupted. Supple and green, they climbed the oak’s trunk.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author: saki101
Characters/Pairings: John Watson/Sherlock Holmes, James Moriarty, Mycroft Holmes, Gregory Lestrade, Molly Hooper, Mrs Hudson
Rating: PG-13
Genre: slash
Word Count: ~3.7K
Disclaimer: Sherlock is not mine and no money is being made.
Summary: Sherlock and Moriarty never meet on the rooftop at Bart's.
A/N: A stand-alone AU, predominantly of the Sherlock universe, but with a pinch of ACD, written for the Spook-Me Multi-Fandom Halloween Ficathon 2014 in response to the prompt: witch/wizard.
(Also, on AO3.)
Excerpt: There are roses guarding the verandah. I can smell them through the open windows. They have sharp claws and drink the sun.
This First Summer Month That Brings the Rose
There was pain
Red
And sharp
And white around the edges
And then there was darkness.
***
The sounds of pain surrounded me. Some of them were mine. When it was too much, the darkness came for me.
***
The sun in Peshawar overflowed. Molten, it entered through the cracks, slithering across my sheets, hot on the back of my hand.
It would jump from my bed to the wall. I couldn’t catch it. I would blink and it would disappear.
***
I am an animal again. I can move and catch the light. Slowly, I shuffle to the verandah and bask, storing up the energy to shuffle back.
There are roses guarding the verandah. I can smell them through the open windows. They have sharp claws and drink the sun.
***
I am fortunate, I know. I move my arm a little more each day. All my fingers bend and grasp. I write. I feed myself and my energy returns.
***
There is a garden beyond the verandah. The sheen of its foliage is dimmed by the dust in the air. The flowers blaze at noon, sweeten at twilight. I know only some of them. I am learning the names of others. There is jasmine not far from the roses. One of the nurses brought me a sprig of it. I wiped the dust from its leaves.
Sometimes I fall asleep on the verandah. I hope to walk in the garden soon.
***
Where the bullet had failed, the bacteria came much closer to succeeding. I shouldn’t have liked to live or practice medicine before antibiotics. Even now, the outcome isn’t certain. Tiny life forms, intent on their survival, mutating to find ways around our defences. They found ways around mine.
***
I burned to the scent of roses. Thorny stems reared up in my fever dreams to scourge the fiery demons that had come to consume me.
I had more defences than I realised.
***
I recovered again, a little more damaged, damaged enough to be discarded. Aimless, I limped through a city with an aloof sun and endured nightmares in a sterile hole without a whiff of a flower.
I withered.
My final defence gleamed from my desk drawer.
***
“John!”
A name many people shared.
“John Watson!”
I turned, squinted at the man beaming at me.
“Stamford. Mike Stamford, we were at Bart’s together,” he said.
***
My fever dreams followed me to Baker Street.
Sometimes, gunfire strafed the desert. I would wake in a sweat, scorched by the sun and shredded by screams.
Sometimes, a life ebbed away beneath my hands and I woke weeping.
But sometimes, a new dream came. Through its shadowy canyons a red-eyed beast stalked a dark-plumed bird and the only sound was the beating of wings. Then, I woke cold and barely breathing.
***
I went south of the river before sunrise and found what I wanted.
“Oh,” Mrs Hudson said when she saw what I’d planted by her kitchen door. “But they’ll grow,” she added hopefully.
“Yes,” I said. “They will.”
***
Sherlock eyed the bare, thorn-encrusted branches jutting from the urns on either side of the front steps.
“They’d make good weapons,” he said as he unlocked the door.
I stared at the barren pots. There was a tinge of green to the wood. “Yes,” I said. “They will.”
***
Sherlock.
I listened to what his breath said when not a word was uttered, to what his eyes said when they contradicted the words.
That was how he asked me not to change my mind and leave the first night. I answered with a bullet.
We had both smiled.
***
When we left the pool, the air was rank with algae.
***
For a moment, the blue lights threw leafy shadows across the room. I wished they had been green.
I leaned over Sherlock’s shoulder. His hand closed around the tiny camera he held and his computer screen went dark.
“I know you,” I whispered, my right arm firm across his chest. With the left, I sunk the thorn into his neck.
***
“Where is he?” Lestrade asked.
“Trying to escape?” a porcine man enquired, staring about the room, snout quivering.
“Check for yourself,” I said and gestured towards the bedroom.
***
They found Sherlock lying as I’d left him, composed and neat on his bed. His hands were folded on his chest, a half-opened rose clasped between them.
I’d opened the windows and the air was sweet with the blooms outside upon the walls.
Lestrade gaped at me.
“Offed himself, did he?” Donovan said. “I guess that proves it.”
Lestrade covered his mouth.
“Coward,” Donovan muttered.
The porcine man strolled in. “Is he dead?” he asked. “Save us some trouble if he is. Donovan, call for a doctor.”
“I’m a doctor,” I said. “Shall I check?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Maybe we should be arresting you,” he said.
“For being a doctor?” I enquired.
He turned to Donovan. “Is he? A doctor?”
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
“Go on, then,” he said. “We need an ambulance either way,” he added in Donovan’s direction.
She strode out of the room. With a sniff and a grimace, he ambled after her.
I reached beneath Sherlock’s collar, closed my eyes and counted. Slow and steady, his heart beat against my fingertips and I sighed.
“Is he?” Lestrade whispered, his voice hoarse.
I opened my eyes and looked at Lestrade. “He’ll be guarded, right?” I asked.
Lestrade nodded.
“Can you go with him? To Bart’s? I know they won’t let me.”
“I’ll try,” Lestrade said.
I walked over to the window and snapped off a rosebud. “Give him this when he wakes up.”
Lestrade took a deep breath and let me tuck the flower into his pocket. “You’re confident that he will?”
“Unless someone else gets to him, yes.”
Lestrade studied me. “You’re not planning something stupid, are you, John?”
“Stupider than this?” I asked, flinging out both my arms. “No.”
***
The flat was quiet. Sherlock gone with the flashing lights.
I picked up his phone, scrolled through the received messages and pushed reply: Come and play. Regent’s Park, Queen Mary’s Gardens, rose arbour. SH
***
The night was cool and bright.
I sat beneath the arbour, a bouquet of full-blown roses balanced on the arm of my bench. As I waited, some of their petals fell.
“Oh, I am so disappointed,” Moriarty said from the opposite side of the arbour. “What with the rose garden and the full moon in June and all…” He sauntered towards me, tearing petals off the blossoms along the path as he passed. “A boy could get his hopes up, you know.”
He stood before me.
“Expecting Sherlock and getting his pet.” Moriarty sat down, turning towards me. “I suppose Sherlock was indisposed.” He touched my shoulder. “Maybe permanently.” He smiled. “I won’t miss him. He’d become boring.”
I raised my eyebrows at that.
“That wouldn’t bother you, I know. You’ll miss him, won’t you? So loyal.” He stroked my arm. “I suppose that’s why he liked you.” He pulled his hand away, rubbed it over his face. “But so predictable. So very, very boring.”
“I’ve come to say good-bye,” I said.
He leaned closer, smoothed his hand down my thigh. “Is that why you brought me flowers?” he asked. “A farewell present?” He moved closer. “They look a little past their prime, but I suppose you had to pick them in a hurry, what with the police running in and out and the ambulance and everything.” He slid his hand to the inside of my thigh. “What is it with you and all the roses anyway? The place looks like…”
He sat back, eyes comically wide, hands to either side of his face. “Was that a tribute to me?" His gaze slipped from mine, settled on my hands. He tapped my knuckles. "Because I used fairy tales to flirt with your master?”
He got up and walked slowly around the bench, hand running along my shoulder, over the top of my head as he passed behind me, ruffling my hair. He gripped my arm when he was back in front and tugged me towards the middle of the bench.
“Johnny, Johnny, is it possible?” he asked. “It’s been so long, I’m not even sure I recognise the feeling.”
My outstretched arm was still steadying the flowers. He snatched them away, threw them into the air. Petals showered down on us as he knelt astride me, hands on either side of my face. “You’ve surprised me, Johnny boy.” He shook his head, his eyes wide and smiling. He slid all the way down to my lap and his eyes got even wider. He rotated his hips. “Oh, I underestimated him, Johnny. You aren’t ordinary at all.”
I smiled.
He jumped up, shouting. “You shouldn’t have killed him, then.” He stopped and looked down at me. “Even if it was for me,” he added softly.
He began to pace. “Is there any chance he’s not dead? Maybe they’ve resuscitated him. It's so hard to be really sure you’ve killed someone these days.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t have any problem with it.”
He turned. He spotted the gun pointing at him from my lap and laughed.
“That’s not a very professional grip there, Johnny boy,” he said.
I shrugged. “It’s fine. I can shoot from any angle.”
He wagged a finger at me. “Don’t get ordinary, Johnny. You were doing very well there.”
I clicked off the safety.
“Oh, Johnny. I was happy for a couple minutes.” He heaved a great sigh and snapped his fingers.
I didn’t even look down. I was sure several reds dots glowed on my body. “I could still get a shot through you before I go.”
He pursed his lips. “Not bad,” he admitted. “You may have earned back half a point, but, it’s not just the snipers I have with me here that are your problem.”
I tilted my head.
“I’ve got one trained on Mrs Hudson. They don’t hear from me tonight. Bang,” he said with expansive arm gestures.
“She’s old,” I replied.
“Lestrade,” he said. “Your good friend, who even warned you about the arrest tonight and everything.”
“Occupational hazard,” I said.
He nodded at me. “Your sister, Harry. I wasn’t going to overlook her. Blood is thicker than water, they say.”
“They haven’t met Harry,” I retorted. “She’s drinking herself to death anyway.”
He sat down. “I thought you were the soft-hearted one,” he said.
I snorted.
His hand moved towards his jacket pocket.
I lifted the gun a little.
“Just my phone,” he explained, “see.” He tugged the hem of his jacket. It was clear there was no gun in the pocket. “So I can call off my hitmen. For tonight.”
I shrugged.
“Better to save leverage for another day, besides I have to pay them per head, you know.”
He tapped a few buttons. Everyone on speed-dial apparently.
“There,” he said. “Now it’s just the two of us and our friends hiding in the bushes. What are you going to do to entertain me?”
“Well,” I said and watched as a red dot came into view on my thigh, swooped across Moriarty’s chest and up into the air. “How’s that?”
***
Molly was crying in the morgue. Quietly, amidst the empty tables.
“Where is he?” I said.
She shook her head, a sort of hiccupping sound coming out when she opened her mouth to answer.
I marched across the room. “No, no, Molly, listen: it will be all right,” I said and took her by the shoulders. “Remember what I told you and just tell me where he is.”
She sounded like she was choking. My eyes flew around the room. “Is he in one of the drawers?”
She shook her head again. “No,” she said and met my eyes. “I’m so sorry, John.”
I suddenly felt colder than the cool room required. “Oh, God. Was there an autopsy?”
Once more, she shook her head.
“Good, good,” I said.
“They wanted one," she answered, voice found. "I delayed the paperwork.”
I kissed her forehead. “You’re a miracle, Molly, but I have to see him now. Please.”
She drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders and pointed at the door to the quarantine room. “They couldn’t figure it out. There was nothing in his blood, but a trace of apigenin and alpha-bisabolol. Like he’d had a cup of chamomile before bed. But they couldn’t rouse him.”
“What did they try?” I called over my shoulder as I ran towards the door.
“Only physical stimulation. They were afraid of a drug reaction to something they couldn’t detect.”
I could hear her footsteps hurrying after me. The door was locked. “Could you?” I asked, glancing back at her, my fingers griping the top of the keypad.
Something hard knocked my hand away.
I turned.
“No,” Mycroft said.
“Not you,” I sighed.
“It’s usual to notify a family member,” he said.
“And why are you preventing me from seeing him?” I asked.
“I think you’ve done quite enough for my brother, Dr Watson,” Mycroft replied.
“No, I haven’t, but if you need something to keep you occupied, you might pop over to Regent’s Park, smell the roses, bring someone along to collect the snipers and other trash lying around.”
He lowered his brows the tiniest bit at me and reached for his phone.
“While you’re out and about, you might want to check on Mrs Hudson and give Lestrade a call. They both had at least one assassin assigned to them. My sister, Harry, too, apparently,” I said.
Somewhere on the Inner Circle, a traffic camera must have swivelled towards the rose garden because Mycroft’s eyebrows went way up.
“I thought you were supposed to see everything. Missed that bit, did you?” Beside me, I heard the keypad beep. Molly really is wonderful. I opened the door.
***
It clicked behind me as it closed. I didn’t bother with the lights, I could see enough. There was only one body bag.
Full of crumpled paper sheets.
I wheeled the table it was on into the shadows. “Sherlock?” I whispered.
“You drugged me,” he answered from a dark corner.
I snorted.
“Well.”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” I said.
“Which part?” he asked, coming out of the deepest shadows.
“You waking up on your own,” I said, observing how his skin reflected even the faint light from the other room. “How did you do it?”
He hesitated, came a little closer. “You surprised me when you stabbed me,” he said.
“I’m three for three at surprising geniuses tonight.”
“Oh?”
“Moriarty decided I killed you to attract his attention,” I replied.
His hand closed on my wrist like a vise. “And did you?” Sherlock asked.
I nodded. “Before the end there, I think he was getting ideas about a threesome and regretting your demise.”
“The end?” Sherlock hadn’t let go. His hand was very warm for someone standing nude in a chilly room.
I nodded again. “I left before the very end. I thought you needed reviving lest someone perform some medically inappropriate procedure on you.” I shrugged. “I suggested Mycroft go clean up. Perhaps he’ll send pictures.”
“He’s the third genius, then,” Sherlock said. “I don’t like you calling him a genius.”
“Well, he is nearly as smart as you are,” I said. “You outwit him often enough, but you have to work at it.”
“I dreamt you kissed me,” Sherlock said, so rapidly I almost missed it.
“What?”
“I’m fairly sure that’s why I woke. I was dreaming you were kissing me,” he replied.
I had to tilt my head further back to look him directly in the eye. “Where?” I asked.
“Geographically or anatomically?”
“Anatomically,” I clarified.
“On the mouth,” he replied. “Isn’t that the traditional fairy tale solution?” His head was bending lower.
I lifted the arm he held towards my lips. “I could have tried a variation,” I said and suckled the flesh at the base of his thumb.
He drew in a breath.
“And now we’ll never know if that would have worked,” I said, bringing the hand back to my mouth. He was flexing his grip on my arm in time to the movement of my tongue.
“But if I was lying flat with my arms by my sides, surely you would have chosen one of the first parts of me revealed when you unzipped the bag,” he reasoned.
“You dreamt you were in the morgue, when I kissed you?”
“No, we were at home as we always…” He interrupted himself.
I stroked my tongue along the base of his thumb, pressed my cheek to the back of his hand. “Always?” I asked. Time had been lost.
He stepped backwards and tugged me after him into the corner. He kept hold of my arm as he rose on his toes and sat on the edge of the table there. “Show me what you think you would have done,” he said and stretched out on the metal.
I bent over him. “You’ll have to let go,” I said.
His fingers loosened and slipped away.
I could barely see him; he was just a more solid darkness in the dark. My hand went to his neck and I exhaled. “It’s what I would have done first,” I said.
He didn’t reply.
“I shouldn’t have been able to find anything, if the machines hadn’t, but I would have checked.” I stroked up the side of his face, feeling the life beneath his jaw and at his temple. “I expected to find you in a room, not here. There would have been fear.”
There had been fear when I found Molly crying and she didn’t answer me.
He remained still.
My fingers traced along his arm, paused at the inside of his elbow and again at his wrist. “If you had been in a room, monitors thrumming faint and slow, there wouldn’t have been this fear.” I lowered my head to his chest, ear against his heart. My legs felt weak. It was a delayed reaction I was having. I curled one arm over his hip, stretched the other out until my fingers reached his hair. It worked. Not quite as planned, but it had worked. To the rhythm of his heartbeat, the words repeated. It worked. It worked. I dragged my hand away from his hip and nestled it in his groin. The beat there was very strong. I rubbed my thumb across it. It beat faster.
Reluctantly, I pulled my hand away, down his thigh and curved my fingers into the bend of his knee. His pulse was strong and rapid. I stood, stroked down to the ankle, paused, counted. Lightly, I kissed the top of his foot, let the skin pulse against my lips. The beast had not caught him, couldn’t hunt him anymore.
Straightening up again, I took off my jacket and rolled it. I felt my way back to his head, tucked the cloth under it and brushed the hair away from his forehead. I kissed him there.
“You were going to go away,” I said against his skin. “I felt it. Felt you pushing me, trying to anger me.” I leaned further over the table. “You thought you had to go alone.” I kissed his eyes. “You don’t.” I kissed his cheeks. “You think I can’t be ruthless,” I whispered, “I can.” When I finally kissed his mouth, his lips were already open.
***
The others had departed, Molly and Mrs Hudson and Harry among the last. It had been a discreet affair. Lestrade and Mycroft alone remained in front of the black stone with our two names and no dates.
“Initially, he wanted a duplicate of the one over there with the word dead cut through the stone,” Mycroft said.
“To the point,” Greg replied and took out a packet of cigarettes. “Mind?”
Mycroft waved his hand.
Greg held out the cigarettes. “Want one?”
Myrcroft sighed and reached for it.
“Let me,” Greg said and tapped out another. He lit them both and passed Mycroft one.
Mycroft eyed the rose pinned to Greg’s lapel. “Are you wearing one all the time now?”
Greg inhaled deeply and let out a long plume of smoke. “Pretty much.”
“You must get some remarks on that,” Mycroft said.
“Yeah, well, most of them think of it as a memento mori and have the decency to just shut it.”
“Even your sergeant?”
She’s already been promoted. Moving to Manchester end of the month,” Greg supplied. “Anything she has to say won’t be irritating me much longer.”
“I didn’t take you as either a sentimental or a superstitious man, Detective Inspector.”
“You saw the same thing I saw in the park,” Greg said. “And I’ve never seen a fresh corpse imbedded in a shrub before. The branch growing out of its mouth was especially grim. God, that look of surprise.” Greg gestured with his cigarette. “So what’s that on your suit jacket, then, Mr Holmes?”
Mycroft peered down his nose at the matching rose on his chest. “Sherlock left very specific instructions about the burial and the funeral, such as it was. I wouldn’t have imagined it was something he would have given so much thought.”
Greg looked up at the oak sapling spreading its spindly branches over the gravestone. “That’s a nice touch.”
Mycroft unpinned the rosebud from his lapel. He set it on top of the tombstone. “Shall we, Inspector?”
Greg bent down and pushed the packet of cigarettes into the fresh dirt at the base of the gravemarker. “I'm going to try to quit again,” he said and followed Mycroft away.
***
“I never expected to attend my own burial,” I said from behind the evergreen tree.
“I’m glad Lestrade didn’t dislodge the microphone when he made his vow of nicotine abstinence,” Sherlock grumbled.
“Nothing like a funeral to make one think about giving up smoking,” I said. I looked around. “How long until the others find out we aren’t dead?”
Sherlock turned to me. “Two, three years, I estimate. If we make it back at all.”
A breeze began to whisper through the leaves above us.
“You trying to discourage me?” I asked, pulling up the zip on my jacket.
Sherlock smiled as we headed down the hill. “No, I’m trying to make sure you don’t change your mind.”
***
Branches swayed. The rosebud dropped from the top of the tombstone onto the sapling’s dark soil. Fine roots burrowed. Rain fell.
One by one, the petals unfurled and from the thorny stem, shoots erupted. Supple and green, they climbed the oak’s trunk.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~