Right, so - this has sparked with a plotbunny I've had for ages and now I really want to write it, but RL is a bit manic atm and so I'm likely to update slightly erratically...sorry in advance. Also, I've changed a couple of things - the subjects the students are studying are different, and they're already friends before the murders. I hope that's OK - let me know if you want me to continue or not! I promise the similarities will get a lot more glaring in later chapters.
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Lynton College, Oxford University. Porter’s Lodge. 25th January 2011.
‘All of it?’ John says in disbelief. ‘We have to watch all of it?’
There are literally weeks’ worth of security footage on the computer in front of them. Only two days of it cover the events of the case directly, and the police have already been through those, as well as bits and pieces of the rest of it.
‘Well, I certainly do,’ Sherlock says, sitting down at the desk. ‘There’s no need for you to do so, though. You’re unlikely to notice anything important anyway.’
John doesn’t bother getting annoyed about the insult, as if he reacted to every sarcastic reference to his intelligence Sherlock threw at him he’d never do anything else. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘Text if you need anything.’
As John leaves Sherlock opens up the footage dated two weeks before the first murder and leans forward, fingers pressing together, watching intently.
*
Lynton College, Oxford University. JCR*. 11th January 2011.
The JCR is empty except for two girls. One in a red wool jumper, long shiny blonde hair, blue eyes, denim skirt, thick tights. The other’s taller, thinner, paler. Short dark hair, bags under the eyes, jeans and a black hoodie. They’re sitting on one of the dingy yellow sofas.
[Sherlock consults the case notes, double checks them against the photos on the third page of the file, even though he knows without a doubt that it must be them. Yes, there they are: the dark-haired girl is Sophie Heaney (first year, History) and the blonde is Amy Moore (second year, English).]
‘Are you all right?’ Moore asks, a hand tentatively touching her friend’s shoulder.
‘Of course I’m all right.’ Heaney’s accent is curious; upper-middle class Londoner all the way through except for a slight Belfast lilt at the edges that Sherlock might not have caught if he hadn’t already known her background.
‘Well, you would say that.’ Moore’s tone is light, she’s half-smiling, but Heaney turns away from her, gazing at the wall.
‘I’m fine, really,’ she says eventually. ‘And I don’t want to talk about it in the JCR. They’ve got CCTV in here now.’
[The police haven’t watched all the footage here, but they have seen this bit. They think that line’s suspicious. Personally, Sherlock can understand not wanting to talk about your personal life where people you’ve never met might end up hearing it. People hide all sorts of things, and most of them aren’t murder, more’s the pity.]
‘Fair enough,’ Moore says, slinging an arm casually around the other girl, who tenses just very slightly, then seems to force herself to relax. ‘Hey - in all that drama, I don’t spose you got a chance to watch the Doctor Who Christmas special?’
Heaney seems to brighten instantly. ‘I didn’t, no.’
‘Brilliant. Come up to mine and we’ll watch it and you can dissect all the plot holes. Sound good?’
For the first time, Heaney smiles. ‘Actually, yes.’
[Sherlock doesn’t often bother to write notes when on a case; he’s perfectly capable of retaining the necessary information, but occasionally on the more complicated ones he will scribble down a reminder or two. He finds himself noting down the smile, even though it cannot possibly be important. Not to the case, anyway. But then again - character and relationships and psychology do matter, of course they do, and most of all in a case like this, and intuition is simply subconscious observation, so if an unexpected expression on a suspect’s face strikes Sherlock as interesting it might just be worth writing down.]
crap formatting fail there, sorry, that's what I get for posting in a rush...
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Porter’s Lodge. 25th January 2011.
Sherlock watches CCTV footage for three more hours before John comes back to see how he’s getting on.
‘I’m assuming you haven’t eaten anything today? Stupid question. C’mon.’ John bodily drags Sherlock out of the chair, leans forward to pause the video and then looks pointedly at the door.
‘Oh, fine,’ Sherlock says. ‘I want to interview some of the students anyway.’
‘Lunch first.’
‘Yes, yes, I said fine,’ Sherlock says impatiently, striding towards the door.
‘Which students? Heaney?’
‘Yes. And Moore. And a couple of the others, as well as some of the tutors. And I’m going to need to talk to Heaney’s father at some point as well.’
John nods, and takes Sherlock’s arm to steer him towards Ship Street and the nearest Prét, where Sherlock unwillingly consumes an entire sandwich and applies an extra nicotine patch.
‘Do you think she did it?’ John asks abruptly.
‘I haven’t even spoken to her yet.’
There’s a pause, then John says, very quietly, ‘I hope she didn’t.’
‘Don’t get emotionally attached to the suspects,’ Sherlock says witheringly. ‘I should think it would be obvious why that’s not a good idea.’
If his tone’s a little harsher than he intended, it’s only because he means the warning as much for himself as for John, if not more so.
*Junior Common Room - term used at a bunch of UK universities to mean both a body of representation for undergraduates and an actual physical common room with, you know, sofas and vending machines and stuff. I hope my defining things isn’t really patronising/annoying, I just thought explaining too much’d be better than being confusing.
Nnnnnn yes yes yes yes YAY. This is looking perfect so far. And please don't let this make you feel rushed, I know how RL can be, but, erm... post more. A lot more. Soon. :)
Lynton College, Oxford University. Balford room (temporarily serving as police interview room). 25th January 2011.
‘So you’re the private detective.’
‘Consulting detective. And this is my colleague, Dr. Watson.’
Sophie Heaney gives them both an appraising glance, and then sits back in her chair. ‘OK. Can we get on with this? I’ve got a tute at four.’
Sherlock sits down opposite her, and John takes a seat beside him.
The first words out of Sherlock’s mouth are not ones John has ever heard him say to someone involved in a murder case before, even though they are among the most obvious things to say. ‘I’m sorry about your mother.’
‘Thank you.’ The girl is studying Sherlock more carefully now. ‘Although rather a ridiculous thing to say if I murdered her.’
‘I don’t know whether you murdered her or not,’ Sherlock says. ‘I don’t have the data to assess that yet. Until then, it doesn’t hurt to be polite.’
This last sentence has John staring at Sherlock in open bewilderment. Sherlock refuses to meet his eyes.
‘Well, I didn’t, as it happens, although there’s obviously no reason why you should believe me.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
The girl smiles slightly. ‘That’s not the usual question, you know.’
‘She caused you a great deal of pain,’ Sherlock says. ‘She abandoned you repeatedly. You could have stopped it all easily, but according to you, you didn’t. Why not?’
‘The idea never crossed my mind,’ Heaney says at last. ‘I didn’t want her dead; that was the last thing in the world I wanted.’
Sherlock nods, once. Then he says, ‘And what about Michael Warder? Why didn’t you kill him?’
The girl’s smile grows slightly wider. ‘Because I didn’t think of it first.’
*
‘”It doesn’t hurt to be polite?”’
‘You’re always telling me so. I’d have thought you’d be pleased.’
‘Of course I am. But…’ John trails off, not knowing where to start.
Sherlock forestalls the need for him to say anything else. ‘If she killed her mother, then kindness may cause her to let her guard drop slightly. If she didn’t, then she’s a valuable witness and upsetting her might make her shut down and fail to tell us anything else.’
Sherlock is being evasive now. John smiles. ‘That’s never stopped you before.’
‘I’m going to have to be careful with this one,’ Sherlock muses, ignoring this comment. ‘She’s very intelligent, Sophie Heaney.’
‘You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call anyone who wasn’t a Holmes intelligent.’
‘Oi!’
John and Sherlock both spin round, startled. A blonde girl who John recognises from the case files as Amy Moore is running towards them.
‘You’re the detective and his friend, right? You were just talking to Sophie?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know how she seems,’ the girl says abruptly. ‘But she isn’t - she’s not, really. And she’s not going to jail because she’s too proud to defend herself. I won’t let it happen. Don’t you even try to make that happen.’
Sherlock surveys her. ‘Noted,’ is all he says.
‘She didn’t like Michael, course she didn’t, how could she, doesn’t mean she killed him, and she’d never in a million years kill her mother, she used to have nightmares about her dying. You don’t know anything about her, d’you understand?’
‘I’m not part of the official force,’ Sherlock says, very calm in the face of the torrent of flustered rage facing him. ‘It isn’t, in the end, up to me. But I don’t make mistakes. If she didn’t commit the crimes, I won’t allow her to be arrested for them. All right?’
The girl seems to relax slightly at this. ‘OK,’ she mutters. ‘Sorry for yelling. See you.’ And she’s gone, heading off towards the back quad.
‘Well, that was…interesting,’ John says, staring after her. Then he looks thoughtfully at Sherlock. ‘You care about this lot, don’t you?’
‘Caring about them, as I’ve told you before, isn’t any use to anyone.’
‘But you do, all the same.’
‘I’m interested, that’s all. This is a lot more complicated than the police originally thought.’
‘D’you know who did it yet?’ John asks, teasingly.
‘No. But Sophie Heaney didn’t. If she committed a crime,’ and there’s now a trace amount of pride entering Sherlock’s voice, ‘she’d do it much more cleverly than that.’
Much to Sherlock’s chagrin, John insists on their eating in hall with the students that night. They are staying in college accommodation, after all, and they’ve been offered free meals while they’re here and it’s only sensible to take advantage of it. Besides, it’s polite. None of these arguments particularly resonates with Sherlock, but he finds himself being dragged along anyway.
Sherlock remembers his two years at Cambridge before he dropped out. He remembers not having any means of cooking for himself and not being able to afford restaurants or takeaway. He doesn’t eat often, of course, but at least a few times a week he’d have to go through the ordeal of sitting in hall on long wooden benches, crushed between people who didn’t want to talk to him.
Lynton College’s formal hall looks very much like the one he remembers. He and John collect the highly dubious-looking food and then take a seat awkwardly at the end of a table full of chattering students.
Sherlock has no intention whatsoever of touching the suspicious greyish goo on his plate. He did eat the sandwich earlier, so John can’t complain. He pokes at it vaguely with a fork, watching the students.
He picks out Heaney and Moore quickly, sitting, like John and Sherlock, at the farthest end of a table, Moore one seat nearer the centre than Heaney. They are very close together, which is inevitable given the lack of space, but they are also leaning very slightly towards each other, their shoulders pressing together. Moore is talking and grinning, gesticulating with her cutlery, and Heaney is half-smiling, too caught up in what her friend is saying, Sherlock thinks, to remember to eat herself.
Someone further down the table calls ‘Amy!’ and Moore twists to respond, grinning at the other person and calling something back to them. Heaney’s barely-there smile disappears instantly, and she looks back down to her plate, but still doesn’t eat anything.
She hates these moments, the moments when Amy’s attention snaps to anybody else, first of all because it leaves her alone, even if it’s only for a minute, but mainly because it reminds her that this girl, who’s all she’s got, doesn’t place the same kind of significance on her, doesn’t have to. That Amy Moore is sane and happy and well-adjusted and popular and Sophie Heaney simply isn’t. That there are plenty of other people who are just as important to Amy as Sophie is, and that one day, probably not far off, someone will be more important.
Sherlock always knows how he deduces things, always has a clear logical progression in his mind that explains it. But he doesn’t know why it is that he can say so precisely what Heaney is feeling, since her expression is so carefully blank. He’s absolutely sure he’s right, though.
Re: FILL 3/?
anonymous
January 18 2011, 13:04:57 UTC
I've been meaning to get around to reading this for days and now I finally have. This is absolutely brilliant so far. ♥ I already love Sophie and Amy rather dearly. Amy's standing up for her was very sweet. And, oh, Sherlock's train of thought in that last bit. My heart goes out to him.
Hopefully there'll be more soon! (Later rather than sooner is also fine, of course, I'm just very excited about this.)
Re: FILL 3/?alltoseekJanuary 20 2011, 18:06:49 UTC
Yeah, Mycroft getting artistic is kinda creepy, not to mention annoying :-)
Now I'm especially enjoying having the two fills for this prompt, because each of you is taking a very different approach. Not only are each set of girls different characters from our boys, they're different from the other set too. Recognizable, but unique. Especially in that young-adult stage of trying to fit in but stand out at the same time :-)
Re: FILL 3/?lizzledpinkJanuary 19 2011, 23:42:35 UTC
First: The name etymology freak in me is SHRIEKING HAPPILY at the names Sophie and Amy. If that wasn't deliberate, well, YOU'RE BLOODY PSYCHIC AND I HUG YOU FOR IT. If it was deliberate, YOU'RE A GENIUS! <333 EEEEEEEEEE!
Second: THIS IS BEAUTIFUL. Sherlock knowing Sophie's exact feelings and everything, oh, my heart, it's ASPLODY.
CONTINUE THIS OR I HUNT YOU DOWN AND TERRORIZE YOU (LOVINGLY, OF COURSE) UNTIL YOU DO.
Re: FILL 3/?
anonymous
January 20 2011, 11:18:15 UTC
yes yes the names were totally deliberate and I love you for noticing <3
and thank you! there is a tiny bit more now, although I'm having to update a bit slowly. I'm not sure I'd mind being tracked down and lovingly terrorized, but nevertheless I'll try and produce more :D
The JCR’s a lot fuller at this time of day than it was in the earlier footage. People are relaxing on the sofas, watching TV, drinking and talking. Heaney isn’t there, but Moore’s with a group of friends.
‘How was your Christmas?’ asks one, a boy with dyed red hair and an earring.
‘Oh, not bad,’ Moore replies, taking a swig from her bottle of cider. ‘Quiet, mostly, ‘cept I did go on the ski trip, which was awesome.’
‘Didn’t you get stuck there for like a week because of the snow?’
‘Yeah, but it was kind of nice, actually, getting an extra week to hang out, even without any skiing.’
[Pointless chatter. Sherlock considers fast-forwarding, but something important could come up and he’d miss it. Nothing to do but sit through the babble.]
‘You coming to Poptarts tonight?’ asks another of the group, a girl in a short blue dress.
‘No, can’t, sorry.’
‘Why not?’
Moore hesitates. ‘I…Sophie’s going, and she doesn’t like me to go with her.’
‘You’re not serious.’
Moore looks very uncomfortable now. ‘Look, she’s my friend, and I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, so…’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, why is she your friend?’
Moore sits up a little straighter. ‘I - I sort of do mind.’
‘But she’s - I don’t mean it in a mean way, but she’s - well, she’s not normal, is she?’
Moore doesn’t say anything.
‘I mean come on, Amy, telling you which clubs you can and can’t go to? That’s weird, you have to admit it. And she’s got pictures of skeletons and neatly-labelled thousand year old preserved corpses on her noticeboard, and she never talks about anything but her subject, when she talks about anything at all.’
‘She does with me.’
‘Really?’ The girl looks amused. ‘Like what?’
Moore shrugs. ‘Lots of stuff. Look, it’s not important. I get why you guys don’t - but, well, I like her. Let’s just drop it, OK?’
‘But I’m worried about you.’ The girl puts a gentle hand on Amy’s arm. [Sherlock grits his teeth, then forces his face to relax when he realises what he’s doing.] ‘She’s - I mean, it’s not as if she’s just a bit eccentric. She’s…I think she’s probably got some sort of, you know’ - her voice lowers - ‘mental illness, or something. And her telling you not to go to Poptarts because she’s going there isn’t what friends do, I’m sorry. She doesn’t like you, Amy, she’s not capable of that, she just gets a kick out of manipulating you.’
‘Fine, I’ll come,’ Amy [Moore, Sherlock hurriedly corrects himself] says abruptly, standing up. ‘Just let me go and get changed.’
‘Yaaay!’ cheers the group [and Sherlock doesn’t know what the sudden weight at the pit of his stomach is, but he flicks the monitor off and spins the chair away, thinking that a quick break can’t do any harm.]
-
Lynton College, Oxford University. Porter’s Lodge. 25th January 2011.
‘All of it?’ John says in disbelief. ‘We have to watch all of it?’
There are literally weeks’ worth of security footage on the computer in front of them. Only two days of it cover the events of the case directly, and the police have already been through those, as well as bits and pieces of the rest of it.
‘Well, I certainly do,’ Sherlock says, sitting down at the desk. ‘There’s no need for you to do so, though. You’re unlikely to notice anything important anyway.’
John doesn’t bother getting annoyed about the insult, as if he reacted to every sarcastic reference to his intelligence Sherlock threw at him he’d never do anything else. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘Text if you need anything.’
As John leaves Sherlock opens up the footage dated two weeks before the first murder and leans forward, fingers pressing together, watching intently.
*
Lynton College, Oxford University. JCR*. 11th January 2011.
The JCR is empty except for two girls. One in a red wool jumper, long shiny blonde hair, blue eyes, denim skirt, thick tights. The other’s taller, thinner, paler. Short dark hair, bags under the eyes, jeans and a black hoodie. They’re sitting on one of the dingy yellow sofas.
[Sherlock consults the case notes, double checks them against the photos on the third page of the file, even though he knows without a doubt that it must be them. Yes, there they are: the dark-haired girl is Sophie Heaney (first year, History) and the blonde is Amy Moore (second year, English).]
‘Are you all right?’ Moore asks, a hand tentatively touching her friend’s shoulder.
‘Of course I’m all right.’ Heaney’s accent is curious; upper-middle class Londoner all the way through except for a slight Belfast lilt at the edges that Sherlock might not have caught if he hadn’t already known her background.
‘Well, you would say that.’ Moore’s tone is light, she’s half-smiling, but Heaney turns away from her, gazing at the wall.
‘I’m fine, really,’ she says eventually. ‘And I don’t want to talk about it in the JCR. They’ve got CCTV in here now.’
[The police haven’t watched all the footage here, but they have seen this bit. They think that line’s suspicious. Personally, Sherlock can understand not wanting to talk about your personal life where people you’ve never met might end up hearing it. People hide all sorts of things, and most of them aren’t murder, more’s the pity.]
‘Fair enough,’ Moore says, slinging an arm casually around the other girl, who tenses just very slightly, then seems to force herself to relax. ‘Hey - in all that drama, I don’t spose you got a chance to watch the Doctor Who Christmas special?’
Heaney seems to brighten instantly. ‘I didn’t, no.’
‘Brilliant. Come up to mine and we’ll watch it and you can dissect all the plot holes. Sound good?’
For the first time, Heaney smiles. ‘Actually, yes.’
[Sherlock doesn’t often bother to write notes when on a case; he’s perfectly capable of retaining the necessary information, but occasionally on the more complicated ones he will scribble down a reminder or two. He finds himself noting down the smile, even though it cannot possibly be important. Not to the case, anyway. But then again - character and relationships and psychology do matter, of course they do, and most of all in a case like this, and intuition is simply subconscious observation, so if an unexpected expression on a suspect’s face strikes Sherlock as interesting it might just be worth writing down.]
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Porter’s Lodge. 25th January 2011.
Sherlock watches CCTV footage for three more hours before John comes back to see how he’s getting on.
‘I’m assuming you haven’t eaten anything today? Stupid question. C’mon.’ John bodily drags Sherlock out of the chair, leans forward to pause the video and then looks pointedly at the door.
‘Oh, fine,’ Sherlock says. ‘I want to interview some of the students anyway.’
‘Lunch first.’
‘Yes, yes, I said fine,’ Sherlock says impatiently, striding towards the door.
‘Which students? Heaney?’
‘Yes. And Moore. And a couple of the others, as well as some of the tutors. And I’m going to need to talk to Heaney’s father at some point as well.’
John nods, and takes Sherlock’s arm to steer him towards Ship Street and the nearest Prét, where Sherlock unwillingly consumes an entire sandwich and applies an extra nicotine patch.
‘Do you think she did it?’ John asks abruptly.
‘I haven’t even spoken to her yet.’
There’s a pause, then John says, very quietly, ‘I hope she didn’t.’
‘Don’t get emotionally attached to the suspects,’ Sherlock says witheringly. ‘I should think it would be obvious why that’s not a good idea.’
If his tone’s a little harsher than he intended, it’s only because he means the warning as much for himself as for John, if not more so.
*Junior Common Room - term used at a bunch of UK universities to mean both a body of representation for undergraduates and an actual physical common room with, you know, sofas and vending machines and stuff. I hope my defining things isn’t really patronising/annoying, I just thought explaining too much’d be better than being confusing.
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‘So you’re the private detective.’
‘Consulting detective. And this is my colleague, Dr. Watson.’
Sophie Heaney gives them both an appraising glance, and then sits back in her chair. ‘OK. Can we get on with this? I’ve got a tute at four.’
Sherlock sits down opposite her, and John takes a seat beside him.
The first words out of Sherlock’s mouth are not ones John has ever heard him say to someone involved in a murder case before, even though they are among the most obvious things to say. ‘I’m sorry about your mother.’
‘Thank you.’ The girl is studying Sherlock more carefully now. ‘Although rather a ridiculous thing to say if I murdered her.’
‘I don’t know whether you murdered her or not,’ Sherlock says. ‘I don’t have the data to assess that yet. Until then, it doesn’t hurt to be polite.’
This last sentence has John staring at Sherlock in open bewilderment. Sherlock refuses to meet his eyes.
‘Well, I didn’t, as it happens, although there’s obviously no reason why you should believe me.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
The girl smiles slightly. ‘That’s not the usual question, you know.’
‘She caused you a great deal of pain,’ Sherlock says. ‘She abandoned you repeatedly. You could have stopped it all easily, but according to you, you didn’t. Why not?’
‘The idea never crossed my mind,’ Heaney says at last. ‘I didn’t want her dead; that was the last thing in the world I wanted.’
Sherlock nods, once. Then he says, ‘And what about Michael Warder? Why didn’t you kill him?’
The girl’s smile grows slightly wider. ‘Because I didn’t think of it first.’
*
‘”It doesn’t hurt to be polite?”’
‘You’re always telling me so. I’d have thought you’d be pleased.’
‘Of course I am. But…’ John trails off, not knowing where to start.
Sherlock forestalls the need for him to say anything else. ‘If she killed her mother, then kindness may cause her to let her guard drop slightly. If she didn’t, then she’s a valuable witness and upsetting her might make her shut down and fail to tell us anything else.’
Sherlock is being evasive now. John smiles. ‘That’s never stopped you before.’
‘I’m going to have to be careful with this one,’ Sherlock muses, ignoring this comment. ‘She’s very intelligent, Sophie Heaney.’
‘You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call anyone who wasn’t a Holmes intelligent.’
‘Oi!’
John and Sherlock both spin round, startled. A blonde girl who John recognises from the case files as Amy Moore is running towards them.
‘You’re the detective and his friend, right? You were just talking to Sophie?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know how she seems,’ the girl says abruptly. ‘But she isn’t - she’s not, really. And she’s not going to jail because she’s too proud to defend herself. I won’t let it happen. Don’t you even try to make that happen.’
Sherlock surveys her. ‘Noted,’ is all he says.
‘She didn’t like Michael, course she didn’t, how could she, doesn’t mean she killed him, and she’d never in a million years kill her mother, she used to have nightmares about her dying. You don’t know anything about her, d’you understand?’
‘I’m not part of the official force,’ Sherlock says, very calm in the face of the torrent of flustered rage facing him. ‘It isn’t, in the end, up to me. But I don’t make mistakes. If she didn’t commit the crimes, I won’t allow her to be arrested for them. All right?’
The girl seems to relax slightly at this. ‘OK,’ she mutters. ‘Sorry for yelling. See you.’ And she’s gone, heading off towards the back quad.
‘Well, that was…interesting,’ John says, staring after her. Then he looks thoughtfully at Sherlock. ‘You care about this lot, don’t you?’
‘Caring about them, as I’ve told you before, isn’t any use to anyone.’
‘But you do, all the same.’
‘I’m interested, that’s all. This is a lot more complicated than the police originally thought.’
‘D’you know who did it yet?’ John asks, teasingly.
‘No. But Sophie Heaney didn’t. If she committed a crime,’ and there’s now a trace amount of pride entering Sherlock’s voice, ‘she’d do it much more cleverly than that.’
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Sherlock remembers his two years at Cambridge before he dropped out. He remembers not having any means of cooking for himself and not being able to afford restaurants or takeaway. He doesn’t eat often, of course, but at least a few times a week he’d have to go through the ordeal of sitting in hall on long wooden benches, crushed between people who didn’t want to talk to him.
Lynton College’s formal hall looks very much like the one he remembers. He and John collect the highly dubious-looking food and then take a seat awkwardly at the end of a table full of chattering students.
Sherlock has no intention whatsoever of touching the suspicious greyish goo on his plate. He did eat the sandwich earlier, so John can’t complain. He pokes at it vaguely with a fork, watching the students.
He picks out Heaney and Moore quickly, sitting, like John and Sherlock, at the farthest end of a table, Moore one seat nearer the centre than Heaney. They are very close together, which is inevitable given the lack of space, but they are also leaning very slightly towards each other, their shoulders pressing together. Moore is talking and grinning, gesticulating with her cutlery, and Heaney is half-smiling, too caught up in what her friend is saying, Sherlock thinks, to remember to eat herself.
Someone further down the table calls ‘Amy!’ and Moore twists to respond, grinning at the other person and calling something back to them. Heaney’s barely-there smile disappears instantly, and she looks back down to her plate, but still doesn’t eat anything.
She hates these moments, the moments when Amy’s attention snaps to anybody else, first of all because it leaves her alone, even if it’s only for a minute, but mainly because it reminds her that this girl, who’s all she’s got, doesn’t place the same kind of significance on her, doesn’t have to. That Amy Moore is sane and happy and well-adjusted and popular and Sophie Heaney simply isn’t. That there are plenty of other people who are just as important to Amy as Sophie is, and that one day, probably not far off, someone will be more important.
Sherlock always knows how he deduces things, always has a clear logical progression in his mind that explains it. But he doesn’t know why it is that he can say so precisely what Heaney is feeling, since her expression is so carefully blank. He’s absolutely sure he’s right, though.
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Hopefully there'll be more soon! (Later rather than sooner is also fine, of course, I'm just very excited about this.)
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[and mycroft is writing in balloon text like a ten year old who's just discovered wordart, it's quite sweet really, if somewhat difficult to copy]
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Now I'm especially enjoying having the two fills for this prompt, because each of you is taking a very different approach. Not only are each set of girls different characters from our boys, they're different from the other set too. Recognizable, but unique. Especially in that young-adult stage of trying to fit in but stand out at the same time :-)
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Second: THIS IS BEAUTIFUL. Sherlock knowing Sophie's exact feelings and everything, oh, my heart, it's ASPLODY.
CONTINUE THIS OR I HUNT YOU DOWN AND TERRORIZE YOU (LOVINGLY, OF COURSE) UNTIL YOU DO.
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and thank you! there is a tiny bit more now, although I'm having to update a bit slowly. I'm not sure I'd mind being tracked down and lovingly terrorized, but nevertheless I'll try and produce more :D
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The JCR’s a lot fuller at this time of day than it was in the earlier footage. People are relaxing on the sofas, watching TV, drinking and talking. Heaney isn’t there, but Moore’s with a group of friends.
‘How was your Christmas?’ asks one, a boy with dyed red hair and an earring.
‘Oh, not bad,’ Moore replies, taking a swig from her bottle of cider. ‘Quiet, mostly, ‘cept I did go on the ski trip, which was awesome.’
‘Didn’t you get stuck there for like a week because of the snow?’
‘Yeah, but it was kind of nice, actually, getting an extra week to hang out, even without any skiing.’
[Pointless chatter. Sherlock considers fast-forwarding, but something important could come up and he’d miss it. Nothing to do but sit through the babble.]
‘You coming to Poptarts tonight?’ asks another of the group, a girl in a short blue dress.
‘No, can’t, sorry.’
‘Why not?’
Moore hesitates. ‘I…Sophie’s going, and she doesn’t like me to go with her.’
‘You’re not serious.’
Moore looks very uncomfortable now. ‘Look, she’s my friend, and I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, so…’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, why is she your friend?’
Moore sits up a little straighter. ‘I - I sort of do mind.’
‘But she’s - I don’t mean it in a mean way, but she’s - well, she’s not normal, is she?’
Moore doesn’t say anything.
‘I mean come on, Amy, telling you which clubs you can and can’t go to? That’s weird, you have to admit it. And she’s got pictures of skeletons and neatly-labelled thousand year old preserved corpses on her noticeboard, and she never talks about anything but her subject, when she talks about anything at all.’
‘She does with me.’
‘Really?’ The girl looks amused. ‘Like what?’
Moore shrugs. ‘Lots of stuff. Look, it’s not important. I get why you guys don’t - but, well, I like her. Let’s just drop it, OK?’
‘But I’m worried about you.’ The girl puts a gentle hand on Amy’s arm. [Sherlock grits his teeth, then forces his face to relax when he realises what he’s doing.] ‘She’s - I mean, it’s not as if she’s just a bit eccentric. She’s…I think she’s probably got some sort of, you know’ - her voice lowers - ‘mental illness, or something. And her telling you not to go to Poptarts because she’s going there isn’t what friends do, I’m sorry. She doesn’t like you, Amy, she’s not capable of that, she just gets a kick out of manipulating you.’
‘Fine, I’ll come,’ Amy [Moore, Sherlock hurriedly corrects himself] says abruptly, standing up. ‘Just let me go and get changed.’
‘Yaaay!’ cheers the group [and Sherlock doesn’t know what the sudden weight at the pit of his stomach is, but he flicks the monitor off and spins the chair away, thinking that a quick break can’t do any harm.]
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