Mankind Should Be Our Business, chp. 2
Sherlock’s been pacing the flat for nearly an hour, pouring over everything that happened. He refuses to admit, even to himself, that he can’t make heads or tails of it. There’s no trace evidence, no fingerprint or fiber to suggest that there was a second person in the flat that night; no smudge or scuff marks that might indicate where his kitchen chair has gone. It’s difficult to deny that the appearance of his... visitor... matches the photograph of Carl Powers that he holds in his hand. His own mantra tells him that, if he is willing to accept that the idea is not completely impossible, then it must be the answer.
“I have been visited by an apparition.” His voice echoes in the empty room and makes a mockery of his statement, but his own deductions have led him to this conclusion.
Fine, yes. Observe and move forward. There must be some sort of scientific explanation for the existence of spirits, but Sherlock does not, has never, believed in predestination. He refuses to accept that his or John’s life is already plotted out somewhere, driving them to a shadowy doom. It is nothing but sentiment of the basest sort, and yet...
There has been time, since the confrontation with Moriarty, to reflect on the actions that brought him to the Pool. He thinks, now, that he might have chosen differently if he’d known that he was playing with John’s life, as well as his own. Sherlock is beginning to realise that keeping John safe (keeping him close) may be a priority. He needs more information, and if these apparitions can provide it, then he’ll go along with whatever they have planned.
“Well, that’s certainly good to hear.” The alarm on his phone chimes softly- it’s 1AM, and he whirls around to see an elderly woman at the kitchen table. She is perched in the space that is still decidedly lacking a chair.
He examines her carefully: physical age between fifty and fifty-five, classic cream-colored Chanel suit, sprig of holly pinned to the lapel. Normally he would be making rapid-fire deductions, but he is coming to the realization that he has no information about the lifestyle choices of a spirit. He may be working from an incorrect data set. He does note that, unlike Carl Powers, her appearance triggers no connections in his mental files, no past cases or decades-old mysteries.
“So then- you are Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, and I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“Long past?”
“Of course not, dear. What use would that be to you?” She shakes her head. “No, what we’re interested in this evening is your past.”
Sherlock’s lip curls. Most of his past is exceedingly dull- he has actually deleted large portions of it. His childhood, the dreadful years at uni followed by the interminable, hazy period between graduation and discovering his Work... What possible use could there be in rehashing any of it? His hope that this experience may bring valuable data-- faint to begin with-- is beginning to dwindle.
“Come now, Sherlock. You know better than to make assumptions without first observing the situation.”
“I also know, madam, that it is rude to eavesdrop on one’s private conversations,” certainly John has drummed that into him often enough, “and therefore can only deduce that it is intolerably rude to do the same to one’s private thoughts.” If only he could teach the same lesson to Mycroft, he could stop searching the flat for bugs once a week.
The look he receives in return for snapping at the ghost reminds him distinctly of being a small boy, facing a scolding from his grandmother.
“I think it’s high time we got started, don’t you, Sherlock?” She beckons him into the kitchen with the wave of a hand. Unlike Carl Powers, this ghost has substance, and she takes his hand in hers before he can flinch away. She blinks, and then-
: : :
They are standing in the middle of what Sherlock recognizes as the parlour of his family’s estate. He hasn’t been home in years, and it’s been at least a decade since it looked like this; the room is full of people, and laughter overlays the string music in the air. Their sudden entrance seems to go unnoticed, which doesn’t surprise him- if the spirit can transport the two of them through both time and space, invisibility cannot be too complicated.
Finished surveying the room, his ghostly companion turns to him. “Do you know why we’re here?”
“I can only presume that you intend to show me some moment which you feel to be of significance. Let us hope for both our sakes that you are correct; I do deplore my time being wasted.”
She merely gestures to the corner of the room, and as if by cue, a commotion starts. Sherlock registers his own voice, young, perhaps seven or eight. People turn to look and Sherlock steps closer.
“Sherlock, you know you can’t tell stories about people, it isn’t right.” His mother, elegantly dressed and having obviously consumed several glasses of champagne, stands in front of her red-faced son. Sherlock is quite familiar with the expression on her face- dismissive, and far more concerned with the scene they are making than with Sherlock himself.
“I wasn’t telling stories,” the child shouts, frustrated nearly to the point of tears. “Mr. Beldman has been kissing Miss Moore! I can tell!” He points to a flustered man standing between two pink-cheeked women, one of whom is Mrs. Beldman. Sherlock passes a look over the three of them and deduces that he had indeed been kissing the other woman earlier. What his childhood self has missed is the fact that the wife had also been kissing her at the time, as the satisfied glance the two women exchange certainly indicates. The expression on Beldman’s face, however, makes it clear that he doesn’t appreciate his laundry being aired quite so publicly.
“That is enough, Sherlock! I absolutely will not have-” his mother cuts herself off at the touch of Mycroft’s hand on her arm. Home from Eton for the holidays, Mycroft looks every inch the Holmes heir; well-dressed, proper, and a fine example of everything that Sherlock wasn’t as a young man. The sudden visual reminder stings in a way that it hasn’t for years.
“I’ll take care of it, Mummy.” He scoops his younger brother into his arms, and the boy promptly dissolves into tears, clearly overwrought. Sherlock and the spirit trail behind Mycroft as he strides from the room and up the stairs, finding an empty drawing room and locking the door behind him.
Mycroft settles into an armchair and rubs a soothing hand over his brother’s back. The expression on his face is one that adult Sherlock doesn’t remember ever having seen- worry lacking condescension, protective without being patronizing, and an anger directed not at Sherlock, but at their mother.
Eventually the boy lifts his head. “I wasn’t lying, Mycroft. I just... figured it out. Like a puzzle.”
Mycroft turns his brother to face him. “I know. It was clever of you to see things that way. But not everyone is as smart as you are, and they don’t necessarily want to know the things that you do- or have you tell other people their secrets, like tonight.”
“I can’t help being clever!”
“But you can keep from saying it. Here’s what we’ll do, alright? Tomorrow we’ll find you a notebook, so that you can write down your observations. Whenever you have a particularly interesting one, instead of telling Mummy, you can send it to me at Eton. How does that sound?”
As the child gives a tiny smile, Sherlock touches his suit pocket, where a small notebook rests even now. He’s carried them with him as long as he can remember, keeping track of observations and deductions, or the results of his various experiments. He’d forgotten that it was Mycroft who first suggested it. His mental image of Mycroft doesn’t include a brother who ever cared for him, who watched over him gently rather than prodding and manipulating.
“It’s interesting, what we choose to forget, isn’t it?” The spirit is still gazing at the younger Sherlock, who has dozed off in his brother’s lap. “I don’t blame you, I suppose- it was hard for you as a child. No one but Mycroft really understood you, did they?”
“No, they didn’t. My school mates thought I was odd- freakish, even. Mummy and Father simply wanted another quiet, perfect son- someone exactly like Mycroft. They weren’t interested in what I could do, only in the noise I made doing it.”
Sherlock shakes his head. It’s over and done with, has been for years, and he refuses to allow himself to be bothered by the thought of it. Nothing but useless emotional drivel.
The spirit sets a hand on his shoulder, and again-
: : :
They are somewhere else. He knows it instantly, and wishes he didn’t. He’s thought about deleting this memory, in fact; tried to, on at least one occasion. He has found that it slips back in, unwanted.
It is Christmas Eve yet again, and they are standing in the flat that Sherlock and Victor had shared after graduating from University. The carol singers outside aren’t enough to drown out the sound of Victor’s shouting.
Sherlock finds himself unable to step forward. He knows what he would see if he opened the bedroom door: himself, splayed across the bed after another attempt at distraction ended in a needle and a 7% solution. Victor, home earlier than expected after spending the day with family. Victor, to whom he’d sworn that the last time would be just that- the last time.
The door opens and it is, impossibly, worse than he remembers. The cocaine-induced haze has dulled the edges of Victor’s grief and his own strung-out appearance. Victor walks into the sitting room, a hastily-packed bag in one hand, keys in the other. Sherlock stumbles after, dazed.
“I will not do this anymore, Sherlock. We both know that you love something else more than you ever cared for me.”
Sherlock, so high he can barely stand, grips the edges of the doorframe. “Don’t go, Victor. You should...stay.”
“Why? I’ve watched you drop everything you were ever interested in, myself included, so that you can spend more time getting high. You want to get away from the world, but I live in it! These things that you ignore, that you’re constantly running away from- I’m a part of them, and you’ve left me behind.”
“They don’t matter. You do. I haven’t changed towards you, have I?”
“God, Sherlock, yes, you have! Every time you shoot up you erase me from your life a little bit more. I loved you, your brain and your spirit, and when you’re high you don’t have either. I refuse to stay here and watch you do this to yourself any longer.”
With that, Victor walks to the door and is gone. Sherlock reaches out, but loses his hold on the doorframe and slides to the floor. He is in tears, wants Victor back, desperately, but the tiny part of his brain that never shuts down is already calculating where he will find his next fix.
The adult Sherlock turns his back on his younger self. He cannot make himself watch another second of this. He does not want a reminder of the junkie that he used to be, prefers to pretend that it simply never happened. As the young man on the floor starts to crawl back to his bedroom (back to the rest of his stash), the spirit focuses her attention on the older Sherlock.
“Tell me about Victor, Sherlock. We both know the disdain that you have for most people. What made him different? What was so special about him, that Sherlock Holmes would want to be with him, of all people? Although obviously it wasn’t enough to keep your attention.”
Sherlock whirls around, suddenly furious at the spirit’s tone. How dare she?
“He was kind to me! He was the first of my peers to treat me like a person, instead of a calculating machine or some sort of circus sideshow. He was clever, and funny, and warm, and he never expected me to be anything but who I was. Do not talk about him that way. He... mattered.”
Against all expectations, the spirit does nothing but smile at this outburst. “That’s it, Sherlock. You just might be starting to get it.”
He draws himself to his full height, more than ready to deliver every scathing remark he’s held back so far this evening. Before he can speak, the Spirit lays a finger across his lips, smiles again-
: : :
He’s back in the flat. The only sound is his phone, the alarm letting him know that it is 2am.
Chapter 3 >
“I have been visited by an apparition.” His voice echoes in the empty room and makes a mockery of his statement, but his own deductions have led him to this conclusion.
Fine, yes. Observe and move forward. There must be some sort of scientific explanation for the existence of spirits, but Sherlock does not, has never, believed in predestination. He refuses to accept that his or John’s life is already plotted out somewhere, driving them to a shadowy doom. It is nothing but sentiment of the basest sort, and yet...
There has been time, since the confrontation with Moriarty, to reflect on the actions that brought him to the Pool. He thinks, now, that he might have chosen differently if he’d known that he was playing with John’s life, as well as his own. Sherlock is beginning to realise that keeping John safe (keeping him close) may be a priority. He needs more information, and if these apparitions can provide it, then he’ll go along with whatever they have planned.
“Well, that’s certainly good to hear.” The alarm on his phone chimes softly- it’s 1AM, and he whirls around to see an elderly woman at the kitchen table. She is perched in the space that is still decidedly lacking a chair.
He examines her carefully: physical age between fifty and fifty-five, classic cream-colored Chanel suit, sprig of holly pinned to the lapel. Normally he would be making rapid-fire deductions, but he is coming to the realization that he has no information about the lifestyle choices of a spirit. He may be working from an incorrect data set. He does note that, unlike Carl Powers, her appearance triggers no connections in his mental files, no past cases or decades-old mysteries.
“So then- you are Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, and I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“Long past?”
“Of course not, dear. What use would that be to you?” She shakes her head. “No, what we’re interested in this evening is your past.”
Sherlock’s lip curls. Most of his past is exceedingly dull- he has actually deleted large portions of it. His childhood, the dreadful years at uni followed by the interminable, hazy period between graduation and discovering his Work... What possible use could there be in rehashing any of it? His hope that this experience may bring valuable data-- faint to begin with-- is beginning to dwindle.
“Come now, Sherlock. You know better than to make assumptions without first observing the situation.”
“I also know, madam, that it is rude to eavesdrop on one’s private conversations,” certainly John has drummed that into him often enough, “and therefore can only deduce that it is intolerably rude to do the same to one’s private thoughts.” If only he could teach the same lesson to Mycroft, he could stop searching the flat for bugs once a week.
The look he receives in return for snapping at the ghost reminds him distinctly of being a small boy, facing a scolding from his grandmother.
“I think it’s high time we got started, don’t you, Sherlock?” She beckons him into the kitchen with the wave of a hand. Unlike Carl Powers, this ghost has substance, and she takes his hand in hers before he can flinch away. She blinks, and then-
: : :
They are standing in the middle of what Sherlock recognizes as the parlour of his family’s estate. He hasn’t been home in years, and it’s been at least a decade since it looked like this; the room is full of people, and laughter overlays the string music in the air. Their sudden entrance seems to go unnoticed, which doesn’t surprise him- if the spirit can transport the two of them through both time and space, invisibility cannot be too complicated.
Finished surveying the room, his ghostly companion turns to him. “Do you know why we’re here?”
“I can only presume that you intend to show me some moment which you feel to be of significance. Let us hope for both our sakes that you are correct; I do deplore my time being wasted.”
She merely gestures to the corner of the room, and as if by cue, a commotion starts. Sherlock registers his own voice, young, perhaps seven or eight. People turn to look and Sherlock steps closer.
“Sherlock, you know you can’t tell stories about people, it isn’t right.” His mother, elegantly dressed and having obviously consumed several glasses of champagne, stands in front of her red-faced son. Sherlock is quite familiar with the expression on her face- dismissive, and far more concerned with the scene they are making than with Sherlock himself.
“I wasn’t telling stories,” the child shouts, frustrated nearly to the point of tears. “Mr. Beldman has been kissing Miss Moore! I can tell!” He points to a flustered man standing between two pink-cheeked women, one of whom is Mrs. Beldman. Sherlock passes a look over the three of them and deduces that he had indeed been kissing the other woman earlier. What his childhood self has missed is the fact that the wife had also been kissing her at the time, as the satisfied glance the two women exchange certainly indicates. The expression on Beldman’s face, however, makes it clear that he doesn’t appreciate his laundry being aired quite so publicly.
“That is enough, Sherlock! I absolutely will not have-” his mother cuts herself off at the touch of Mycroft’s hand on her arm. Home from Eton for the holidays, Mycroft looks every inch the Holmes heir; well-dressed, proper, and a fine example of everything that Sherlock wasn’t as a young man. The sudden visual reminder stings in a way that it hasn’t for years.
“I’ll take care of it, Mummy.” He scoops his younger brother into his arms, and the boy promptly dissolves into tears, clearly overwrought. Sherlock and the spirit trail behind Mycroft as he strides from the room and up the stairs, finding an empty drawing room and locking the door behind him.
Mycroft settles into an armchair and rubs a soothing hand over his brother’s back. The expression on his face is one that adult Sherlock doesn’t remember ever having seen- worry lacking condescension, protective without being patronizing, and an anger directed not at Sherlock, but at their mother.
Eventually the boy lifts his head. “I wasn’t lying, Mycroft. I just... figured it out. Like a puzzle.”
Mycroft turns his brother to face him. “I know. It was clever of you to see things that way. But not everyone is as smart as you are, and they don’t necessarily want to know the things that you do- or have you tell other people their secrets, like tonight.”
“I can’t help being clever!”
“But you can keep from saying it. Here’s what we’ll do, alright? Tomorrow we’ll find you a notebook, so that you can write down your observations. Whenever you have a particularly interesting one, instead of telling Mummy, you can send it to me at Eton. How does that sound?”
As the child gives a tiny smile, Sherlock touches his suit pocket, where a small notebook rests even now. He’s carried them with him as long as he can remember, keeping track of observations and deductions, or the results of his various experiments. He’d forgotten that it was Mycroft who first suggested it. His mental image of Mycroft doesn’t include a brother who ever cared for him, who watched over him gently rather than prodding and manipulating.
“It’s interesting, what we choose to forget, isn’t it?” The spirit is still gazing at the younger Sherlock, who has dozed off in his brother’s lap. “I don’t blame you, I suppose- it was hard for you as a child. No one but Mycroft really understood you, did they?”
“No, they didn’t. My school mates thought I was odd- freakish, even. Mummy and Father simply wanted another quiet, perfect son- someone exactly like Mycroft. They weren’t interested in what I could do, only in the noise I made doing it.”
Sherlock shakes his head. It’s over and done with, has been for years, and he refuses to allow himself to be bothered by the thought of it. Nothing but useless emotional drivel.
The spirit sets a hand on his shoulder, and again-
: : :
They are somewhere else. He knows it instantly, and wishes he didn’t. He’s thought about deleting this memory, in fact; tried to, on at least one occasion. He has found that it slips back in, unwanted.
It is Christmas Eve yet again, and they are standing in the flat that Sherlock and Victor had shared after graduating from University. The carol singers outside aren’t enough to drown out the sound of Victor’s shouting.
Sherlock finds himself unable to step forward. He knows what he would see if he opened the bedroom door: himself, splayed across the bed after another attempt at distraction ended in a needle and a 7% solution. Victor, home earlier than expected after spending the day with family. Victor, to whom he’d sworn that the last time would be just that- the last time.
The door opens and it is, impossibly, worse than he remembers. The cocaine-induced haze has dulled the edges of Victor’s grief and his own strung-out appearance. Victor walks into the sitting room, a hastily-packed bag in one hand, keys in the other. Sherlock stumbles after, dazed.
“I will not do this anymore, Sherlock. We both know that you love something else more than you ever cared for me.”
Sherlock, so high he can barely stand, grips the edges of the doorframe. “Don’t go, Victor. You should...stay.”
“Why? I’ve watched you drop everything you were ever interested in, myself included, so that you can spend more time getting high. You want to get away from the world, but I live in it! These things that you ignore, that you’re constantly running away from- I’m a part of them, and you’ve left me behind.”
“They don’t matter. You do. I haven’t changed towards you, have I?”
“God, Sherlock, yes, you have! Every time you shoot up you erase me from your life a little bit more. I loved you, your brain and your spirit, and when you’re high you don’t have either. I refuse to stay here and watch you do this to yourself any longer.”
With that, Victor walks to the door and is gone. Sherlock reaches out, but loses his hold on the doorframe and slides to the floor. He is in tears, wants Victor back, desperately, but the tiny part of his brain that never shuts down is already calculating where he will find his next fix.
The adult Sherlock turns his back on his younger self. He cannot make himself watch another second of this. He does not want a reminder of the junkie that he used to be, prefers to pretend that it simply never happened. As the young man on the floor starts to crawl back to his bedroom (back to the rest of his stash), the spirit focuses her attention on the older Sherlock.
“Tell me about Victor, Sherlock. We both know the disdain that you have for most people. What made him different? What was so special about him, that Sherlock Holmes would want to be with him, of all people? Although obviously it wasn’t enough to keep your attention.”
Sherlock whirls around, suddenly furious at the spirit’s tone. How dare she?
“He was kind to me! He was the first of my peers to treat me like a person, instead of a calculating machine or some sort of circus sideshow. He was clever, and funny, and warm, and he never expected me to be anything but who I was. Do not talk about him that way. He... mattered.”
Against all expectations, the spirit does nothing but smile at this outburst. “That’s it, Sherlock. You just might be starting to get it.”
He draws himself to his full height, more than ready to deliver every scathing remark he’s held back so far this evening. Before he can speak, the Spirit lays a finger across his lips, smiles again-
: : :
He’s back in the flat. The only sound is his phone, the alarm letting him know that it is 2am.
Chapter 3 >