Prompt Post Part XXVIII
Please check the Sticky Post to find the newest active part and post your prompts there.
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... )
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... )
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...
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
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
Reply
Reply
I've just posted an "outtake scene," FYI.
Thanks a million for reading/commenting. You've really made my day!
Reply
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!
Reply
Now to go have a cry...
THANK YOU.
Reply
Reply
I'm doing the de-anon thing here to say this has been reworked, edited, and polished, and it's now posted here: "Five Boxes."
Reply
Leave a comment