(Dollhouse/Sherlock) The Impossible Detective for jaune_chat
Title: The Impossible Detective
Author: hobbit_eyes
Fandoms: Dollhouse, Sherlock
Characters: Sherlock; Adelle
Pairings: None
Rating: G
Word count: 3000
Spoilers: All of Sherlock, no specific spoilers of events in Dollhouse
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Sherlock and Dollhouse belong to their respective creators
A/N: This was the easiest pinch-hit I've ever done, thanks for the awesome prompts! And thanks to aurilly for beta-ing.
Summary: Adelle DeWitt is approached in a bar by Sherlock, who's been sent by Mycroft to try to find out what Rossum is up to. What he doesn't know is that she already knows him very well.
Fortnum and Mason is hardly the most fashionable place for a drink in London, but that is precisely why Adelle DeWitt always favoured it on her visits. Only a select few make the journey up through the department store to the fine restaurant at the top, and fewer still are admitted to the Drawing Room, a place so exclusive that only half the staff knows about it. It is Invitation Only, and Adelle was issued an Invitation in Perpetuity ten years ago. So, she could sit at a high table, look over Green Park to the palace in the distance, and drink one of the finest gin and tonics in the capital - all the finer because next to none of the people crawling by on the pavement below knew about it.
She would occasionally get bothered, of course, by gentlemen from the city assumed she was there waiting for someone, or lonely sitting by herself. But they were usually sensible enough to understand from one practised glare that their attentions were unwelcome, and if not, the waiters were very fast, very polite and very discreet. But it’s still of no little surprise to her that evening when a tall man in a black coat strides right into the Drawing Room like he owns the place, sits himself down opposite her at her window table, and holds out a hand saying, “Sherlock Holmes. How do you do?”
She recognises him instantly. Of course she does. And it’s only because she recognises him that she’s able to keep her face a blank, polite mask. She takes one more small sip of her drink before placing the glass back down carefully on the table. “Excuse me?”
His eyes narrow at her, and he sits back in his chair. “You recognise me.”
She knows there’s no point in lying. “Yes, I do.”
“How interesting. Mycroft said you wouldn’t.”
“Mycroft sent you?”
“Afraid so.” Sherlock shuffles in his seat, trying to adjust the coat he’s sitting on to be more comfortable, and Adelle can see waiters barely restraining themselves from running over, taking it from him, and hanging it away in some unseen cupboard. She takes advantage of the moment to run her eyes quickly over him. Yes, he’s exactly the same. Dark hair, interesting face, but his eyes have something new. It’s quite something to behold. She takes another sip of her drink to mask her face as she quickly decides how she’s going to manage this.
“He wants to know what you’re doing in London,” Sherlock continues in a bored voice, looking out the window. “He’s trying to keep an eye on Rossum in general and wanted me to try to find out from you what you’re up to. Your corporation has some very close ties with the higher-ups that make him nervous. You used to work here in London, yes? But have been in LA for a good long while. I honestly don’t know what he was expecting me to do, wine and dine you? He might as well have sent John.”
Adelle barely restrains an amused smile. “I think you’re ranting at the wrong person.”
“I’m not ranting.” He looks back to her with an affronted expression. “I’m simply observing his inefficiency. What am I supposed to tell from looking at you? You’re smart, you’re rich, you’re successful, you’re single, you’re ambitious. Just as boring and unoriginal as most of the people in this city.”
Adelle smiles a tight smile and shrugs a little, picking up her drink and toasting him. “Guilty as charged.”
His face changes in an instant. He goes from sitting back in his chair looking bored to leaning forwards on his hands, elbows on the table, looking hard at her in a rather unnerving fashion. “But you know me. Yet I don’t know you. And I remember faces.”
Adelle tries to keep nonchalant, taking a long slow drink from her glass. “Mm?”
“You didn’t just recognise me. You knew me. You haven’t just seen me in passing, you’ve known me. It startled you to see me again.” He begins to smile, just a little. She can see he’s interested now. “Where do you know me from?”
Adelle is a practised liar, but she doesn’t know how well it’ll work here. But if the only alternative is telling him the truth, it’s no alternative at all. “University. Cambridge, Sidney Sussex. Ringing any bells?”
He frowns. “Yes.”
“I was there for a year doing a postdoc, years and years ago now. I knew of you, I saw you around the college, but I never really spoke to you. But I was given one of your class’s exam papers to mark, and I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t pay them the proper attention I should have done - I’d been invited to a formal by one of the professors I had rather a crush on, so I rushed through them. Reading through yours again later, I came to realise I’d severely undermarked you... it was my fault you got a 2.1 in that subject rather than the first you deserved. It’s rather plagued on my conscience since.”
Sherlock just looks at her, intently, and she meets his gaze as levelly as she can. It’s uncomfortably like having her mind read, and she can only try to imagine the visual cues she might be giving him. Finally he concludes, with a little excitement, “No you didn’t. You’re lying.”
She sets down her glass. “Am I that easy a study?”
“No, you did quite a good job. But you never did a postdoc, you’re too good at doing your own hair, and you were never at Sidney Sussex, your pronunciation has more of an Oxfordian weight to it and no-one goes to both the Oxbridges. But you do feel guilty when you look at me... so why lie?”
A waiter is trying to catch her eye, looking concerned at this pushy stranger who almost certainly doesn’t have his own invite - he probably has Mycroft’s, she realises - but she just nods. It’s all right. She plays with her glass, suddenly a little nervous. “If I were to tell you that it was really, really in your best interest to walk away now, and forget this conversation, would it work?”
“No,” says Sherlock instantly, with a smile.
“Of course it wouldn’t,” she says quietly to herself.
Suddenly Sherlock changes again. Watching a new realisation enter his mind is like watching a flock of settled pigeons in a tree suddenly burst into flight - instant, explosive, controlled chaos. Before, he was settled comfortably on his hands, relaxed and enjoying trying to work out the mystery before him. But now, his face falls, just a little, and he sits upright, hands resting on the table in front of him, and he stares at her, smile nowhere to be seen.
“You’re not surprised by me,” he says.
Her stomach sinks, just a little, and she knows there’s no getting out of this now. “No.”
“You’re not annoyed by me, you’re not surprised by the way I act at all. You do know me. You know me well. You’re guilty. You’re ashamed - but also a little proud.” He looks perplexed. “You’re proud I am the way I am. Why?”
Adelle lets out a long, tired sigh. “Sherlock. You need to understand, you’re not supposed to know this. You were never supposed to know this. I’m breaking so many protocols even talking to you -”
“Stop making excuses and get to the point,” Sherlock snaps. He’s angry now, he’s afraid of what he hasn’t been able to work out. Adelle reacts by remaining utterly calm, and utterly professional. She finishes her drink and looks up to meet his gaze straight on.
“Sherlock. Have you ever heard of the Dollhouse?”
“Legend,” he says instantly, as though on instinct, but then stops as he properly takes on what she’s said. “Oh, but it’s not.”
“No. It’s real. We have one here in London, I used to work there. We give people what they need. We have the technology -”
“You take people and trick them into letting you wipe their minds and implant new personalities for the rich to play with,” says Sherlock impatiently. “Just because it was a legend doesn’t mean I don’t know what it is. So what are you saying?”
Adelle knows she doesn’t have to say any more, that Sherlock already knows, even if he’s still looking for another - any other - possibility. But she goes on. “We received a commission when I was still junior in the House. Someone very wealthy on independent means, who wanted an ongoing project...” He doesn’t stop her, though she wishes he would. “He wanted a detective. The greatest detective the world had ever seen. Someone who could solve any puzzle, any crime, the most impossible of mysteries.” His face is frozen, and she’s having trouble keeping on looking into his eyes. “It was one of our greatest successes,” she finishes quietly, and waits for him to speak.
Sherlock seems to be struggling. She can see he wants to shake this off, to keep asking questions and get the full picture, but this isn’t something that can just be shaken off. It has a hold on his mind, his heart, demanding his attention, even though there’s nothing he can do. Finally, he lets out a great, shuddering breath, and says, “I’m not real. I’m a Doll.”
Adelle just nods.
“Whose?” His eyes are clear, but he is rigid, trying to stop himself from shaking, from losing it completely, and his voice is strained in trying to keep level. “Someone in government? An experiment? Does Mycroft know?”
Tentatively, Adelle says, “That’s supposed to remain confidential -”
“Jesus Christ!” shouts Sherlock suddenly, banging a hand on the table, “You can at least tell me that!”
Adelle holds up a hand to keep away the waiters, anxiously circling and ready to pounce and drag out this disturbance. She tells him, as gently as she can, “His name is Moriarty.”
Sherlock goes pale. He slumps back in his chair and runs a hand over his face. Adelle gives him a minute, and then says, “Do you want me to go on?” He just nods. Of course he does. “He wanted a challenge. Someone to keep him sharp. He felt alone, unmatched. So he came to us... to create him a nemesis.”
She sees Sherlock take this in. His eyes are lost somewhere in the distance, seeing nothing, his hand still over his mouth. She uses the moment to signal to the waiter to bring her another gin and tonic, and to bring him a large, fine scotch. She didn’t know if he’d want it, but if he did, he was damn well going to get the best in the house.
The drinks are brought over and, without even looking at it, Sherlock grabs it from the waiter’s hand and knocks it back as if it were water. He clears his throat, sits up, and manages to say, “When?”
“At university. Sidney Sussex. You were an amateur detective already - you were perfect. We didn’t change your background, or your family, just... just parts of your personality.”
“What was I like before?”
Her first instinct is to be sympathetic, reassuring, but one look in his eyes tells her that that’s not what he needs. He’ll barely remember her once he’s done with her here. He just wants the information, and he’ll deal with it on his own terms. So she decides to stay professional.
“Not much different, to be honest. You were already brilliant. Still utterly lacking in people skills. Maybe had a bit more of a sense of humour.” Her voice is passionless, as though she’s describing the differences between the newest model of some gadget and its now defunct predecessor. “But you were lost. There were so many distractions for you. You lashed out at these distractions, got into trouble. And brilliant people who get into trouble often find their way to us.”
As she’d expected, he simply took this on board, and nodded. “So how did you change me?”
“We focussed you. We stripped away your distractions. We made it so that you could solve any mystery you came across, that you could see the all-too-telling details in everyday life that others could never dream of.” She paused. “This also meant that you could only see the details. Solving mysteries would be your driving force. The reason you got up in the morning. You couldn’t not. To leave details that didn’t make sense would drive you mad.” Sherlock was still looking at her intently, listening hard to every word she said, but she could see that it was beginning to cost him. Something tremendous was going on inside that brain of his, but he wasn’t letting a flicker of it reach his face. “You could have proved a worthy adversary for Moriarty as you were. But we were to make sure that you’d never be able to stop. That you could never be content if he was out there - that you were just as alone as him.”
He nods again. She feels so, so sorry for him in this moment, can actually feel something breaking inside her, that she wants to reach out and take his hand. But she mustn’t.
“You must have a control measure,” he says, so abruptly that it startles her. “Moriarty would have been sure of that. A way for him to stop me if I go too far. A way for you to stop me if I go too far. Let me guess - some kind of subconscious trigger, or...” His voice trails off, and when he looks up at her again, all the colour is gone from his face, and for the first time, there’s an actual flash of genuine pain in his eyes. “John?”
She prepares to lie, knowing how much this will cost him, but by the way his face contorts, she knows it’s already too late. “He doesn’t know,” she says quickly, trying desperately to reassure him, because she can see part of him dying right before her eyes. But at her words, he gives a groan and buries his face in his hands. “He never knew. We only took him on after he’d come to you and made friends with you, it’s just as subconscious for him as it is for you. Your friendship is real. Your partnership is real.”
Sherlock is hardly hearing her, and though he sits up again, he can’t look at her. He stares out the window instead, but sees nothing. She sees a flash of light catching on a glistening in the bottom of his eyes, and quickly looks away, feeling as though she just glimpsed something unspeakably personal. “What is he?” she hears him ask finally, his voice tight.
“He’s your handler. He’s just the same as the John he was before - as the John you’ve always known, that’s all the same John - but if you ever become a danger to others, he’s primed to... stop you.”
“To kill me?” He says this with such calm acceptance that it shocks her, and she looks back to him.
“No! There’s - there’s a key phrase - to get you to come with him quietly. He’d bring you back to the Dollhouse...”
“And you’d reset me.” He nods. The glistening in his eyes is gone now.“Just wipe away everything that I’ve been. Send me back to my old, dull life.” He looks sharply up at her. “Are you going to have to do that now?”
“It’s protocol. You’ve been compromised. You’ll be returned to your normal life. Someone else will become the Sherlock you were.”
“And John?”
She shrugs. “Like I said, your friendship is real. We can’t take that from you.”
He considers this. He considers this for a long time. Finally, he says, “No.”
“No?”
“No.” He sits back upright, and suddenly it’s like the broken man who was sat there just a minute before never existed. He looks levelly at her, he speaks calmly, and she knows there’s going to be no arguing from her. “You’re not going to do that. Not now, at any rate. Somewhere down the line, maybe I’ll come and find you, and ask you to restore me to how I was. But now, I’m staying like this. And I’m taking over my own contract. However much Moriarty pays you, I’ll match it, and I get full control over what happens to me. You don’t even have to tell him. I just get back control over my own life. Understand? Because if you don’t -” His face goes very low and very cold, and he leans closer to her. “- I will tell my brother. He has high-up friends too, and I bet they're scarier than yours.”
Adelle nods, unable to speak. Sherlock stands up. “Good. Thank you for your information, Miss DeWitt. I’ll be in touch.”
“Wait -” she blurts out as he starts striding towards the door. He stops and turns back to her, his face unreadable. “I’m sorry,” she manages.
He nods slowly. “Good,” he says, and turns on his heel and leaves.
-END-
A/N: That thing about the Drawing Room at Fortnum and Mason is true. I visited there and saw it on a sign, along with ‘By Invitation Only’. Intrigued, I asked several staff members about how you got an invitation, and none of them had even HEARD of it. It probably isn’t a bar, as depicted here, but I took some artistic license!
Prompt:
The only time Adelle ever saw 'Sherlock' cry was when he deduced exactly what he was.
Author: hobbit_eyes
Fandoms: Dollhouse, Sherlock
Characters: Sherlock; Adelle
Pairings: None
Rating: G
Word count: 3000
Spoilers: All of Sherlock, no specific spoilers of events in Dollhouse
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Sherlock and Dollhouse belong to their respective creators
A/N: This was the easiest pinch-hit I've ever done, thanks for the awesome prompts! And thanks to aurilly for beta-ing.
Summary: Adelle DeWitt is approached in a bar by Sherlock, who's been sent by Mycroft to try to find out what Rossum is up to. What he doesn't know is that she already knows him very well.
Fortnum and Mason is hardly the most fashionable place for a drink in London, but that is precisely why Adelle DeWitt always favoured it on her visits. Only a select few make the journey up through the department store to the fine restaurant at the top, and fewer still are admitted to the Drawing Room, a place so exclusive that only half the staff knows about it. It is Invitation Only, and Adelle was issued an Invitation in Perpetuity ten years ago. So, she could sit at a high table, look over Green Park to the palace in the distance, and drink one of the finest gin and tonics in the capital - all the finer because next to none of the people crawling by on the pavement below knew about it.
She would occasionally get bothered, of course, by gentlemen from the city assumed she was there waiting for someone, or lonely sitting by herself. But they were usually sensible enough to understand from one practised glare that their attentions were unwelcome, and if not, the waiters were very fast, very polite and very discreet. But it’s still of no little surprise to her that evening when a tall man in a black coat strides right into the Drawing Room like he owns the place, sits himself down opposite her at her window table, and holds out a hand saying, “Sherlock Holmes. How do you do?”
She recognises him instantly. Of course she does. And it’s only because she recognises him that she’s able to keep her face a blank, polite mask. She takes one more small sip of her drink before placing the glass back down carefully on the table. “Excuse me?”
His eyes narrow at her, and he sits back in his chair. “You recognise me.”
She knows there’s no point in lying. “Yes, I do.”
“How interesting. Mycroft said you wouldn’t.”
“Mycroft sent you?”
“Afraid so.” Sherlock shuffles in his seat, trying to adjust the coat he’s sitting on to be more comfortable, and Adelle can see waiters barely restraining themselves from running over, taking it from him, and hanging it away in some unseen cupboard. She takes advantage of the moment to run her eyes quickly over him. Yes, he’s exactly the same. Dark hair, interesting face, but his eyes have something new. It’s quite something to behold. She takes another sip of her drink to mask her face as she quickly decides how she’s going to manage this.
“He wants to know what you’re doing in London,” Sherlock continues in a bored voice, looking out the window. “He’s trying to keep an eye on Rossum in general and wanted me to try to find out from you what you’re up to. Your corporation has some very close ties with the higher-ups that make him nervous. You used to work here in London, yes? But have been in LA for a good long while. I honestly don’t know what he was expecting me to do, wine and dine you? He might as well have sent John.”
Adelle barely restrains an amused smile. “I think you’re ranting at the wrong person.”
“I’m not ranting.” He looks back to her with an affronted expression. “I’m simply observing his inefficiency. What am I supposed to tell from looking at you? You’re smart, you’re rich, you’re successful, you’re single, you’re ambitious. Just as boring and unoriginal as most of the people in this city.”
Adelle smiles a tight smile and shrugs a little, picking up her drink and toasting him. “Guilty as charged.”
His face changes in an instant. He goes from sitting back in his chair looking bored to leaning forwards on his hands, elbows on the table, looking hard at her in a rather unnerving fashion. “But you know me. Yet I don’t know you. And I remember faces.”
Adelle tries to keep nonchalant, taking a long slow drink from her glass. “Mm?”
“You didn’t just recognise me. You knew me. You haven’t just seen me in passing, you’ve known me. It startled you to see me again.” He begins to smile, just a little. She can see he’s interested now. “Where do you know me from?”
Adelle is a practised liar, but she doesn’t know how well it’ll work here. But if the only alternative is telling him the truth, it’s no alternative at all. “University. Cambridge, Sidney Sussex. Ringing any bells?”
He frowns. “Yes.”
“I was there for a year doing a postdoc, years and years ago now. I knew of you, I saw you around the college, but I never really spoke to you. But I was given one of your class’s exam papers to mark, and I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t pay them the proper attention I should have done - I’d been invited to a formal by one of the professors I had rather a crush on, so I rushed through them. Reading through yours again later, I came to realise I’d severely undermarked you... it was my fault you got a 2.1 in that subject rather than the first you deserved. It’s rather plagued on my conscience since.”
Sherlock just looks at her, intently, and she meets his gaze as levelly as she can. It’s uncomfortably like having her mind read, and she can only try to imagine the visual cues she might be giving him. Finally he concludes, with a little excitement, “No you didn’t. You’re lying.”
She sets down her glass. “Am I that easy a study?”
“No, you did quite a good job. But you never did a postdoc, you’re too good at doing your own hair, and you were never at Sidney Sussex, your pronunciation has more of an Oxfordian weight to it and no-one goes to both the Oxbridges. But you do feel guilty when you look at me... so why lie?”
A waiter is trying to catch her eye, looking concerned at this pushy stranger who almost certainly doesn’t have his own invite - he probably has Mycroft’s, she realises - but she just nods. It’s all right. She plays with her glass, suddenly a little nervous. “If I were to tell you that it was really, really in your best interest to walk away now, and forget this conversation, would it work?”
“No,” says Sherlock instantly, with a smile.
“Of course it wouldn’t,” she says quietly to herself.
Suddenly Sherlock changes again. Watching a new realisation enter his mind is like watching a flock of settled pigeons in a tree suddenly burst into flight - instant, explosive, controlled chaos. Before, he was settled comfortably on his hands, relaxed and enjoying trying to work out the mystery before him. But now, his face falls, just a little, and he sits upright, hands resting on the table in front of him, and he stares at her, smile nowhere to be seen.
“You’re not surprised by me,” he says.
Her stomach sinks, just a little, and she knows there’s no getting out of this now. “No.”
“You’re not annoyed by me, you’re not surprised by the way I act at all. You do know me. You know me well. You’re guilty. You’re ashamed - but also a little proud.” He looks perplexed. “You’re proud I am the way I am. Why?”
Adelle lets out a long, tired sigh. “Sherlock. You need to understand, you’re not supposed to know this. You were never supposed to know this. I’m breaking so many protocols even talking to you -”
“Stop making excuses and get to the point,” Sherlock snaps. He’s angry now, he’s afraid of what he hasn’t been able to work out. Adelle reacts by remaining utterly calm, and utterly professional. She finishes her drink and looks up to meet his gaze straight on.
“Sherlock. Have you ever heard of the Dollhouse?”
“Legend,” he says instantly, as though on instinct, but then stops as he properly takes on what she’s said. “Oh, but it’s not.”
“No. It’s real. We have one here in London, I used to work there. We give people what they need. We have the technology -”
“You take people and trick them into letting you wipe their minds and implant new personalities for the rich to play with,” says Sherlock impatiently. “Just because it was a legend doesn’t mean I don’t know what it is. So what are you saying?”
Adelle knows she doesn’t have to say any more, that Sherlock already knows, even if he’s still looking for another - any other - possibility. But she goes on. “We received a commission when I was still junior in the House. Someone very wealthy on independent means, who wanted an ongoing project...” He doesn’t stop her, though she wishes he would. “He wanted a detective. The greatest detective the world had ever seen. Someone who could solve any puzzle, any crime, the most impossible of mysteries.” His face is frozen, and she’s having trouble keeping on looking into his eyes. “It was one of our greatest successes,” she finishes quietly, and waits for him to speak.
Sherlock seems to be struggling. She can see he wants to shake this off, to keep asking questions and get the full picture, but this isn’t something that can just be shaken off. It has a hold on his mind, his heart, demanding his attention, even though there’s nothing he can do. Finally, he lets out a great, shuddering breath, and says, “I’m not real. I’m a Doll.”
Adelle just nods.
“Whose?” His eyes are clear, but he is rigid, trying to stop himself from shaking, from losing it completely, and his voice is strained in trying to keep level. “Someone in government? An experiment? Does Mycroft know?”
Tentatively, Adelle says, “That’s supposed to remain confidential -”
“Jesus Christ!” shouts Sherlock suddenly, banging a hand on the table, “You can at least tell me that!”
Adelle holds up a hand to keep away the waiters, anxiously circling and ready to pounce and drag out this disturbance. She tells him, as gently as she can, “His name is Moriarty.”
Sherlock goes pale. He slumps back in his chair and runs a hand over his face. Adelle gives him a minute, and then says, “Do you want me to go on?” He just nods. Of course he does. “He wanted a challenge. Someone to keep him sharp. He felt alone, unmatched. So he came to us... to create him a nemesis.”
She sees Sherlock take this in. His eyes are lost somewhere in the distance, seeing nothing, his hand still over his mouth. She uses the moment to signal to the waiter to bring her another gin and tonic, and to bring him a large, fine scotch. She didn’t know if he’d want it, but if he did, he was damn well going to get the best in the house.
The drinks are brought over and, without even looking at it, Sherlock grabs it from the waiter’s hand and knocks it back as if it were water. He clears his throat, sits up, and manages to say, “When?”
“At university. Sidney Sussex. You were an amateur detective already - you were perfect. We didn’t change your background, or your family, just... just parts of your personality.”
“What was I like before?”
Her first instinct is to be sympathetic, reassuring, but one look in his eyes tells her that that’s not what he needs. He’ll barely remember her once he’s done with her here. He just wants the information, and he’ll deal with it on his own terms. So she decides to stay professional.
“Not much different, to be honest. You were already brilliant. Still utterly lacking in people skills. Maybe had a bit more of a sense of humour.” Her voice is passionless, as though she’s describing the differences between the newest model of some gadget and its now defunct predecessor. “But you were lost. There were so many distractions for you. You lashed out at these distractions, got into trouble. And brilliant people who get into trouble often find their way to us.”
As she’d expected, he simply took this on board, and nodded. “So how did you change me?”
“We focussed you. We stripped away your distractions. We made it so that you could solve any mystery you came across, that you could see the all-too-telling details in everyday life that others could never dream of.” She paused. “This also meant that you could only see the details. Solving mysteries would be your driving force. The reason you got up in the morning. You couldn’t not. To leave details that didn’t make sense would drive you mad.” Sherlock was still looking at her intently, listening hard to every word she said, but she could see that it was beginning to cost him. Something tremendous was going on inside that brain of his, but he wasn’t letting a flicker of it reach his face. “You could have proved a worthy adversary for Moriarty as you were. But we were to make sure that you’d never be able to stop. That you could never be content if he was out there - that you were just as alone as him.”
He nods again. She feels so, so sorry for him in this moment, can actually feel something breaking inside her, that she wants to reach out and take his hand. But she mustn’t.
“You must have a control measure,” he says, so abruptly that it startles her. “Moriarty would have been sure of that. A way for him to stop me if I go too far. A way for you to stop me if I go too far. Let me guess - some kind of subconscious trigger, or...” His voice trails off, and when he looks up at her again, all the colour is gone from his face, and for the first time, there’s an actual flash of genuine pain in his eyes. “John?”
She prepares to lie, knowing how much this will cost him, but by the way his face contorts, she knows it’s already too late. “He doesn’t know,” she says quickly, trying desperately to reassure him, because she can see part of him dying right before her eyes. But at her words, he gives a groan and buries his face in his hands. “He never knew. We only took him on after he’d come to you and made friends with you, it’s just as subconscious for him as it is for you. Your friendship is real. Your partnership is real.”
Sherlock is hardly hearing her, and though he sits up again, he can’t look at her. He stares out the window instead, but sees nothing. She sees a flash of light catching on a glistening in the bottom of his eyes, and quickly looks away, feeling as though she just glimpsed something unspeakably personal. “What is he?” she hears him ask finally, his voice tight.
“He’s your handler. He’s just the same as the John he was before - as the John you’ve always known, that’s all the same John - but if you ever become a danger to others, he’s primed to... stop you.”
“To kill me?” He says this with such calm acceptance that it shocks her, and she looks back to him.
“No! There’s - there’s a key phrase - to get you to come with him quietly. He’d bring you back to the Dollhouse...”
“And you’d reset me.” He nods. The glistening in his eyes is gone now.“Just wipe away everything that I’ve been. Send me back to my old, dull life.” He looks sharply up at her. “Are you going to have to do that now?”
“It’s protocol. You’ve been compromised. You’ll be returned to your normal life. Someone else will become the Sherlock you were.”
“And John?”
She shrugs. “Like I said, your friendship is real. We can’t take that from you.”
He considers this. He considers this for a long time. Finally, he says, “No.”
“No?”
“No.” He sits back upright, and suddenly it’s like the broken man who was sat there just a minute before never existed. He looks levelly at her, he speaks calmly, and she knows there’s going to be no arguing from her. “You’re not going to do that. Not now, at any rate. Somewhere down the line, maybe I’ll come and find you, and ask you to restore me to how I was. But now, I’m staying like this. And I’m taking over my own contract. However much Moriarty pays you, I’ll match it, and I get full control over what happens to me. You don’t even have to tell him. I just get back control over my own life. Understand? Because if you don’t -” His face goes very low and very cold, and he leans closer to her. “- I will tell my brother. He has high-up friends too, and I bet they're scarier than yours.”
Adelle nods, unable to speak. Sherlock stands up. “Good. Thank you for your information, Miss DeWitt. I’ll be in touch.”
“Wait -” she blurts out as he starts striding towards the door. He stops and turns back to her, his face unreadable. “I’m sorry,” she manages.
He nods slowly. “Good,” he says, and turns on his heel and leaves.
-END-
A/N: That thing about the Drawing Room at Fortnum and Mason is true. I visited there and saw it on a sign, along with ‘By Invitation Only’. Intrigued, I asked several staff members about how you got an invitation, and none of them had even HEARD of it. It probably isn’t a bar, as depicted here, but I took some artistic license!
Prompt:
The only time Adelle ever saw 'Sherlock' cry was when he deduced exactly what he was.