Prompt Post Part XXVIII
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IMPORTANT! Spoilers for aired episodes are now being allowed on this area of the meme, without warning. If you do not want to encounter spoilers, please prompt at our Spoiler-Free Prompt Post.
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IMPORTANT! Spoilers for aired episodes are now being allowed on this area of the meme, without warning. If you do not want to encounter spoilers, please prompt at our Spoiler-Free Prompt Post.
( Read more... )
She's hugging herself so tightly she can scarcely draw breath.
There are words she must get out - she can feel them rising up to choke her, sharp and agonising, like razorblades in her throat - and she prays to God she hasn't missed him, she's not too late.
A young man is planted outside the DI's door. He looks bloody miserable there. The new lad: yes, of course it's him. Lestrade has too much history with anyone else.
The higher-ups might be celebrating the chance to see the back of him for a time, but they're in the minority. The rank and file of the Yard show Lestrade the kind of respect that's hard-won, not freely given. Sally doubts another security officer could be found on the premises who willingly would escort him to the exit.
This man - boy, really - shifts from foot to foot as she approaches, as if he feels guilty for following the orders he's been given.
She pretends he isn't there and peers over his shoulder into the empty room. It looks exactly as it did before Lestrade left. Before that call from St Bart's that drained the colour from his face and set him to running.
Christ.
No, that's not quite accurate. It doesn't look exactly the same. A cardboard box sits on his desk.
"I'm sorry, Sergeant," the young man blurts out. "He's already gone."
She blinks at him. She's damned if she knows what her next move is.
Hell, she's damned anyway, isn't she?
He seems to take her silence as an invitation to unburden himself.
"They told me he could take any personal effects with him. I brought the box. But."
"But," she prods.
"He said his case files and notes aren't just personal, they're his life." He fidgets, and Sally fights the urge to slap him.
"Those stay here, you know. Protocol. I told him so, and he… he just walked off. Told me to bin anything that was left. Said it didn't matter."
She gazes back into the hauntingly familiar room and swallows.
Like a litany, she recites the details to herself. There's a dark tie he keeps in the left-hand bottom drawer of his desk. He wears it to funerals, and to visits with bereaved families when delivering bad news, and to meetings with superiors when receiving bad news.
Beside it there's an empty picture frame she salvaged from the rubbish bin after removing a photo of his ex-wife. The glass is broken, but it's a nice frame. She's hoped someday he'll have need of it again. That doctor woman at the morgue always has a smile for him, it seems.
God knows he deserves…
His stash of nicotine patches and emergency cigarettes migrates according to his mood and need, but it's somewhere in there.
On top of the file cabinet sits the mug she got him for his last birthday, the one that reads "London's Finest." It mocks her from its solitary perch.
Before she knows what she's doing, she presses her hand to the glass of the door.
"Sergeant," he says.
She ignores him.
***
TBC...
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It's not the first unexpected surprise she's found in the morgue, but it's far more pleasant than most. Molly instantly knows it's meant for her, just as she knows who must be responsible for it.
The tension and tragedy of these recent days have scoured her raw. A great many feelings flood her at once, and she blinks away the promise of tears.
How he found time for this, how he managed the logistics of the delivery, she cannot imagine.
Not chocolates, she guesses. Nothing so trite. Nothing so easily misconstrued as a clichéd romantic gesture.
She opens the bakery box with reverent hands. She tries to see and to observe, to read the meanings behind this gesture.
The biscotti are delicate creations bursting with almonds and hazelnuts, spiced with cinnamon. Half of each wears a glaze of the darkest chocolate. There's something decadent and indulgent about them, nestled together in their folds of paper. She rarely takes the time to savour such luxuries.
They're meant to complement coffee, the kind he always requests from her - well, orders - when he visits St Bart's. Once dunked in her mug they'll dissolve in her mouth, as insubstantial as a memory and just as bittersweet.
Yes, bittersweet. That's it exactly.
For what he's done and what he's asked her to do, this gift is both thanks and apology.
It's everything he'd failed to show her in the past - attention, kindness, esteem - and a promise that she will not want for them from her friend in the future.
It is, she realises, tangible proof that she counts.
She smiles through her tears, and she holds her secrets close.
***
TBC...
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I'm still loving this!
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His hands are thrust deep into his pockets. His shoulder rests against the wall. He's… well, not hunched, not exactly, but braced, as if unsure of his welcome. His gaze is fixed on the pavement as she opens the door.
"Mrs Hudson." He pushes away from the wall and nods his head in that respectful way of his, giving the impression of a bow. Then his eyes are on hers, dark and searching and more than a bit bloodshot. "How are you?"
"Oh, you know, dear," she says. "As well as can be expected."
She doesn't return the kindness of the question, because it's clear that he can't say the same. It doesn't require a consulting detective to deduce from the unshaven face or the casual trousers and shirt that he isn't on the job. She suspects the reason may be linked to this recent tragedy.
For a man who lives for his work as the detective inspector so evidently does - she knows the sort, doesn't she? - forced inaction must be a form of slow torture, if not death. Especially now, with so many unanswered questions, so much that wants explaining.
She regrets handing him disappointment. He has the look of a man who needs no more of it.
"I'm sorry, Detective In-"
"Greg," he says.
"-Greg, but John's not here. He's… taking some time away. I can get you his temporary address, if you like."
"No. No, actually, I stopped by to see how you were." His shrug is self-conscious, even sheepish, as he runs a hand through his silvering hair. "To ask if you needed anything."
He's genuine in his concern, that's clear. The last time he saw her was at the funeral, and that wasn't one of Mrs Hudson's better days.
"Oh, that's very kind of you, dear."
It's lovely of him to trouble himself, but Mrs Hudson also knows what he, perhaps, does not: he's the one who needs something. He's here because he doesn't know where else to be, what else to do with himself.
The signs are familiar. Hardly the first broken man to turn up on her doorstep, is he?
Her boys. They'd been mending from their past hurts so well, too, each growing stronger in his own way.
Then one fell from the roof of St Bart's, and three shattered.
"Right then," Lestrade says, withdrawing a step, then another, gallantly trying to rescue them from an awkward pause. "Good to see you, Mrs Hudson. I'll just-"
"What I need," she interrupts, extending her hand to him, "is some company for tea. You'll join me, won't you?"
He pales at the sight of Sherlock's freshly-washed test tubes and beakers in boxes in her kitchen. Then, without being asked, he stacks them neatly in a corner, handling them with all the gentleness due a newborn child.
***
TBC...
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He likes to call them "boltholes," these invisible pockets of safe haven he has secreted about the city. They're grotty flats and dismal bedsits wedged into dark corners where no respectable citizen would wish to peer for long, camouflaged by general deterioration and neglect.
They're just the thing when Sherlock needs to disappear for a time, to conduct his hunt from a private base of operations.
Mycroft discovered a few of them years ago during one of his more infuriatingly interventionist periods, instantly ending their usefulness. Sherlock hasn't yet forgiven Big Brother for that.
Later Lestrade stumbled upon one on a night Sherlock still doesn't recall too clearly; he resents this intrusion rather less, although he'd never admit it, since the good detective inspector's intervention alone likely kept Sherlock from becoming one more of many junkies who'd overdosed and died in that particular heartbreak of a building.
This is one of the oldest of the boltholes; it's survived Mycroft's meddling and Lestrade's do-goodery and his own various experiments with the most effective ways to make untraceable use of the family funds.
It's now paid for itself, many times over.
It smells of dust and disuse and less wholesome things, but Sherlock isn't fussed. His thoughts are decidedly elsewhere.
Primarily on the safety of three ordinary, boring, brilliant individuals.
His tasks are relatively straightforward. He must collect all of the relevant data, analyse the power dynamics within Moriarty's now-leaderless organisation, and make certain key individuals from said organisation are dead.
Only then can Sherlock know that his three friends' lives are no longer at risk.
To focus on this driving imperative, he fights to ignore his own loss and loneliness at the severing of those three ties. He fights to ignore the mental image of Lestrade slumped at his desk, Mrs Hudson collapsed at home, and - nightmarish of all - John Watson splayed on the pavement at his feet.
He fights to ignore the small box under the fourth floorboard behind the bed that calls out with the promise of making the rest of it bearable. It's still there, after all this time. Sherlock knows he could open that box and disappear in every sense, and the three would live on without him, and it would be so easy…
It won' t happen. He has investigations to conduct, plans to make, people to kill.
A life to resume.
Only then will the great game truly be won.
***
TBC...
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It's a charming cottage, and John imagines it will require little effort to make it feel like a home.
As he waits for the kettle to boil, he wanders to the sitting room. He's found the perfect spot for his desk, near enough to the fire to be cosy on winter evenings. Perhaps he'll finally do as Greg suggests and edit his old blog posts together into book form.
For now the room is a forest of boxes. If he doesn't unpack them, the chore won't be done. The hives have Sherlock's full attention.
He turns to the nearest box and opens its flaps.
And he is ambushed.
He stares. Time passes.
"John?" Sherlock's tone makes it clear this isn't the first time he's said the name.
With a deep breath, John pulls himself back to the present. "Look what I found." He holds his discovery up for inspection.
"The ear hat, John? Really."
"I don't suppose there's much call for deerstalking 'round the apiary."
"None at all, actually."
"Right." John continues to inspect the hat in his hand, even when his vision goes a bit soft and blurry.
"John?" Softer this time.
"I asked you for one more miracle, you know." After a time, he blinks up at his friend. It's an old man's self-indulgence, this, but he is an old man, after all, and he reckons he's earned it. "And you gave it to me."
Sherlock considers John with a pale-eyed, unreadable expression, then shifts his weight, clears his throat, and twitches his long, manic fingers. "Yes, well, I asked you for a cup of tea. It seems one of us must live with disappointment."
For a moment neither speaks. John shakes his head.
"You," John says, in solemn tones, "are an idiot."
And there it is, that slightly mad grin that John would follow anywhere.
THE END
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I've just posted an "outtake scene," FYI.
Thanks a million for reading/commenting. You've really made my day!
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It matters not one whit that the others don't speak. He can hear them thinking. Of course he can.
He can hear them reading the headline to themselves, rolling the words off their mental tongues, tasting its scandal: "Suicide of Fake Genius."
He can hear them judging. The Diogenes Club resounds with the echoes of its members' scorn and contempt for his baby brother.
There is more to the story than even this intelligentsia knows. Then again, Mycroft muses, there always is.
In Mycroft's mind there are many mansions; he enters the distant one on the horizon and follows a labyrinth of stairways and corridors to an underground chamber that houses a secret room.
Hardly a room. A cell, rather. A box.
Access requires a retinal scan, a DNA sample, and the recitation of an arcane code phrase in Classical Latin.
He folds his long bulk into the cramped compartment and seals the door behind him.
In that most hidden of places, Mycroft screams.
***
THE END - REALLY!
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