Fic: Falling
Title: Falling
Author:
lefaym
Beta: Many thanks to
fera_festiva,
iamshadow, and
kath_ballantyne
Fandom: Sherlock
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Sherlock and Molly, Sherlock/John
Summary: Sherlock hasn't stopped falling.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: for The Reichenbach Fall
Disclaimer: Moffat and Gatiss legally own this version of Sherlock Holmes.
Word Count: Approx. 2,000 words.
Cross-posted to AO3
Falling
When Sherlock woke up, he was still falling.
The drugs that had slowed his pulse and stopped his breath still coursed through his system; he could feel himself tumbling through fog, and soon he would hit the ground, if only he could see it.
Too much fog. The fog didn’t tell him anything. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t know. There was only falling.
“John?” He needed light. “John!” He wouldn’t be falling anymore, if only-
“I’m sorry, John’s not here. You said I couldn’t tell him.”
Molly. Molly wasn’t John.
Sherlock kept falling.
* * *
At first there was only a blur, but after a moment the world resolved itself into solid shapes. His head throbbed, and an entire side of his body ached, but if he focused, he could think.
Obviously, this was Molly’s room. The framed photograph on the bedside table would have told anyone that-it showed Molly, about ten years younger than she was now, with an old woman; probably her grandmother, going by the resemblance between them. The floral quilt on the bed had been made by the old woman; she was wearing a blouse with the same patterned fabric. And she had died too, probably about five years ago-the wear and fading on the quilt indicated that it had been in use for about that long. A sentimental remembrance; Molly would feel the need for that sort of thing.
There was a cat around here somewhere, too. Molly had tried to keep her quilt free of fur, but she had failed miserably.
A bottle of water stood on the bedside table beside the photograph; the label declared that the vessel contained all-natural Swiss spring water, but the cheap plastic of the bottle clearly indicated that it more likely held filtered tap-water from Manchester. It was still, nonetheless, water, and Sherlock’s body needed it.
Dizziness overtook him as he pulled himself into a sitting position, and for a moment he recalled being lost in fog, and lost, too, in the sensation of falling. When the feeling passed, Sherlock could hear his own breath, heavy in his ears; air rattled dryly into his lungs, and out again, tearing through his throat. Sherlock grabbed the water bottle and drank, careful to allow only a trickle to pass his lips. His throat demanded more, but he knew that if he gave in, his stomach would reject the fluid soon enough.
Molly’s footsteps approached from outside the room, and moments later, her head appeared around the door frame.
“Molly?” Sherlock cursed himself silently, for sounding so uncertain. Of course it was Molly.
“Sherlock!” she said. “You’re awake.”
“It would appear so.” Really, both of them were making astounding deductions today.
“Are-are you all right?” She stepped into the room, only slightly hesitant. “I mean-you remember what happened?”
Sherlock closed his eyes. Something inside of him-that sensation of his stomach twisting. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten what had happened at any point, but thinking about it directly-it was uncomfortable.
“Yes,” said Sherlock. “I remember.”
Why are you saying this? Sherlock had tried to answer. I’m a fake. It’s a magic trick. But John’s mind didn’t work that way.
“And are you-do you-”
Are you all right? Do you need anything? But he’d answered those questions yesterday. No. Yes. And Molly could do no more than she’d done already.
Sherlock opened his eyes and looked at her. “Has Mycroft been in touch?”
Molly nodded. “Tomorrow,” she said. “He’s going to arrange for you to be taken somewhere tomorrow. But you need more time to recover first.”
Sherlock opened his mouth to object to that, but objecting to reality was futile. He could already feel his body pulling him back towards sleep again. Falling asleep.
He shuddered.
“John,” said Sherlock, forcing himself to remain sitting, to remain alert. “Is he-”
Molly hesitated for a moment. “He’s-all right.” Which meant that John was not all right. But not in danger, either.
“Mrs Hudson? Lestrade?”
Molly’s brow furrowed. “I haven’t heard anything.” But she would have heard something if anything had happened.
Sherlock felt his eyes closing against his will, and the fog started rising again.
You should have thanked her for helping you, said John, inside his head.
Sherlock fell.
* * *
Sherlock sat on Molly’s sofa, studying the marks in the wall. About seventy years ago (but not more than seventy-seven) someone had fired a gun in this room. The bullet’s velocity had been slowed by something roughly the size of an average adult male. Sherlock itched to investigate more closely. He leaned forward, shifting his weight as he prepared to stand-then fell back against the sofa again, as the world seemed to tilt. If he stood, he would fall.
He sucked in air through his teeth.
The side-effects should have worn off by now. Later this evening, some of Mycroft’s people, disguised as removal men working for the erstwhile occupants of the downstairs flat, would take a box containing Sherlock to a safe-house. He couldn’t afford to be weak. There was no room for mistakes.
Molly’s cat jumped up onto the sofa and stared at him. Sherlock looked away. The insufferable creature prodded Sherlock’s thigh with a paw, and then demonstrated a remarkable degree of sense by deserting the sofa and sauntering off towards the kitchen.
The landing outside the flat creaked, and a key turned in the lock.
Molly was back then.
She’d been both reluctant and eager to leave him earlier. He’d simply assured her that he’d recovered enough that he could be left alone for a day, and reminded her too, that if she called in sick to work for a second day, people might start to grow suspicious, if they knew what to look for.
(Of course, people never did know what to look for.)
The moment that Molly stepped through the door, her hands full of shopping bags, Sherlock frowned.
“You’ve been to Baker Street,” he said. There was a stain on the cuff of her blouse; he recognised the shade as belonging to one of Mrs Hudson’s herbal teas. A slight whiff of the incense that Mrs Hudson used when her hip was particularly bad; that was there too.
Molly froze. “I thought-I thought you might like to hear about everybody. Nobody thought it was strange that I went there, and the press have let up a bit now.”
“I suppose they have.” The morning’s news had been all about a sex/bribery scandal involving a member of the cabinet, a children’s TV star, and an astonishingly large quantity of molasses. Sherlock rather suspected that Mycroft had organised that.
“I know you’ll probably say it was stupid to go there, but-”
Sherlock fixed his eyes on the patched-up bullet mark in the wall. “How were they?”
“Mrs Hudson was-she kept talking about how she was going to get rid of the bits of bodies you kept in the fridge. I, um, I said I’d take care of that for her.”
Sherlock found himself smiling for a moment.
“And-and I heard about Greg Lestrade too.”
“Yes?”
“There’s going to be an internal inquiry at Scotland Yard. He might get demoted, but-”
“Idiots,” said Sherlock, between gritted teeth. He’d have to see if Mycroft could do something about that, too.
“And I heard about John.”
“Yes?” Almost involuntarily, Sherlock turned to look at her.
Molly set her shopping on the floor and sat beside him on the sofa. “He left Baker Street,” she said softly. “Mrs Hudson said he came back for a few hours yesterday, then he packed his things in a suitcase and went to stay with his sister.”
Again, that twisting sensation in his gut.
“Mrs Hudson let me take a look around the flat,” Molly continued, her voice small. “So I could see what I’d need to take the body parts away.”
“You didn’t-”
I didn’t touch anything of yours,” she said quickly. “Well, except for the body parts.”
“Good.”
“But-” Molly paused and took a deep breath. “I did take something for you.”
“What?” Sherlock fixed his gaze on her, using a glare that most people found unsettling. “What did you take?”
Molly didn’t flinch. She met his gaze, and her small fingers encircled his wrist. “Something you need,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
Molly tugged on his wrist, pulling his hand upwards and turning it over so that his open palm faced the ceiling. She used her free hand to retrieve something from her jacket pocket, and a moment later, Sherlock felt her palm fold over his, with something cool and metallic between them.
His breath caught. Two stainless steel disks, with writing etched into the surface, linked by two ball-chains of different lengths. Sherlock knew what he would see even before Molly pulled her hand away.
A POS
TL236392C
WATSON
J H
OD
5NLDF
“You shouldn’t have taken these.” Rough. His voice was rough.
“He left them behind,” said Molly. “in the bottom of a drawer. Even if he does go back, I don’t think he’ll notice-”
“-and even if he did notice, he wouldn’t connect it with me. I know,” Sherlock finished for her. John had continued to wear his dog tags for exactly fifteen days after he’d moved into their flat, and Sherlock hadn’t seen them since. Even if John did go looking for them, he’d simply assume that he’d misplaced them somewhere.
“Then why is there a problem?”
“Someone else might notice.” The twisting pain in his stomach turned to heat, which seared upwards like a burning arrow. “And what made you think I could take them with me?”
“I didn’t-”
“I can’t keep anything that connects me to this life.” He ground his teeth together and spoke through them. “Nothing. Do you understand that, Molly?”
His hand clenched around the tiny disks; his fingernails dug into his palms.
“I just thought-”
“You didn’t think.” He spat the words out.
For a moment, Molly looked away. She drew a long shuddering breath, and Sherlock saw her jaw grow tense, and then relax. When she turned back towards him, her face was calm. “You called out for him,” she said.
“What?”
“When you were trying to wake up. You called out for him.”
Everything went still. The twisting was back; it was as though his innards wanted to tie themselves in knots, but he couldn’t move.
If he moved, he would fall.
“Sherlock?” Molly’s hand was over his. “Sherlock?”
Suddenly, he was breathing. Short, heavy breaths that rang loud in his ears. He forced himself to slow, slow everything down.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Must be-drugs in my system, still affecting me.”
“I’ll get you a glass of water, shall I?”
Sherlock nodded. A moment to recover himself. He still felt as though he might topple at any moment. He mustn’t-he couldn’t-allow himself this weakness.
His hand was still clenched. He allowed it to relax, to open. Two angry red arcs had imprinted on his palm.
Sherlock hooked a finger from each hand around the chains and held them up. They swung before his eyes in the single strip of light that fell between Molly’s mostly-closed curtains.
Foolish. There was no reason to-
In one swift movement, Sherlock looped the chains over his head, allowing them to settle around his neck.
“Oh!”
Sherlock turned his head at Molly’s exclamation. She stood at the kitchen door, a glass of water in hand.
“You’re wearing them,” she said softly.
“It would appear that I am.”
“I thought you said-”
“I know what I said.” Sherlock tucked the tags inside his shirt. “I’m taking them anyway.”
He could feel the metal against his chest, warm now, from the time it had spent in his hand.
He stood.
Molly was still looking at him from the kitchen door. Sherlock crossed the room in three steps, so that he stood in front of her. He considered her for a moment.
“Thank you, Molly,” he said.
That was good, said John.
For the first time since he’d jumped, the ground felt stable beneath him.
-------------------------------
Author's Note: My thanks to
iamshadow for suggesting John's dog tags as the personal item that Molly steals for Sherlock.
Author:
lefaym
Beta: Many thanks to
fera_festiva,
iamshadow, and
kath_ballantyne
Fandom: Sherlock
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Sherlock and Molly, Sherlock/John
Summary: Sherlock hasn't stopped falling.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: for The Reichenbach Fall
Disclaimer: Moffat and Gatiss legally own this version of Sherlock Holmes.
Word Count: Approx. 2,000 words.
Cross-posted to AO3
Falling
When Sherlock woke up, he was still falling.
The drugs that had slowed his pulse and stopped his breath still coursed through his system; he could feel himself tumbling through fog, and soon he would hit the ground, if only he could see it.
Too much fog. The fog didn’t tell him anything. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t know. There was only falling.
“John?” He needed light. “John!” He wouldn’t be falling anymore, if only-
“I’m sorry, John’s not here. You said I couldn’t tell him.”
Molly. Molly wasn’t John.
Sherlock kept falling.
* * *
At first there was only a blur, but after a moment the world resolved itself into solid shapes. His head throbbed, and an entire side of his body ached, but if he focused, he could think.
Obviously, this was Molly’s room. The framed photograph on the bedside table would have told anyone that-it showed Molly, about ten years younger than she was now, with an old woman; probably her grandmother, going by the resemblance between them. The floral quilt on the bed had been made by the old woman; she was wearing a blouse with the same patterned fabric. And she had died too, probably about five years ago-the wear and fading on the quilt indicated that it had been in use for about that long. A sentimental remembrance; Molly would feel the need for that sort of thing.
There was a cat around here somewhere, too. Molly had tried to keep her quilt free of fur, but she had failed miserably.
A bottle of water stood on the bedside table beside the photograph; the label declared that the vessel contained all-natural Swiss spring water, but the cheap plastic of the bottle clearly indicated that it more likely held filtered tap-water from Manchester. It was still, nonetheless, water, and Sherlock’s body needed it.
Dizziness overtook him as he pulled himself into a sitting position, and for a moment he recalled being lost in fog, and lost, too, in the sensation of falling. When the feeling passed, Sherlock could hear his own breath, heavy in his ears; air rattled dryly into his lungs, and out again, tearing through his throat. Sherlock grabbed the water bottle and drank, careful to allow only a trickle to pass his lips. His throat demanded more, but he knew that if he gave in, his stomach would reject the fluid soon enough.
Molly’s footsteps approached from outside the room, and moments later, her head appeared around the door frame.
“Molly?” Sherlock cursed himself silently, for sounding so uncertain. Of course it was Molly.
“Sherlock!” she said. “You’re awake.”
“It would appear so.” Really, both of them were making astounding deductions today.
“Are-are you all right?” She stepped into the room, only slightly hesitant. “I mean-you remember what happened?”
Sherlock closed his eyes. Something inside of him-that sensation of his stomach twisting. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten what had happened at any point, but thinking about it directly-it was uncomfortable.
“Yes,” said Sherlock. “I remember.”
Why are you saying this? Sherlock had tried to answer. I’m a fake. It’s a magic trick. But John’s mind didn’t work that way.
“And are you-do you-”
Are you all right? Do you need anything? But he’d answered those questions yesterday. No. Yes. And Molly could do no more than she’d done already.
Sherlock opened his eyes and looked at her. “Has Mycroft been in touch?”
Molly nodded. “Tomorrow,” she said. “He’s going to arrange for you to be taken somewhere tomorrow. But you need more time to recover first.”
Sherlock opened his mouth to object to that, but objecting to reality was futile. He could already feel his body pulling him back towards sleep again. Falling asleep.
He shuddered.
“John,” said Sherlock, forcing himself to remain sitting, to remain alert. “Is he-”
Molly hesitated for a moment. “He’s-all right.” Which meant that John was not all right. But not in danger, either.
“Mrs Hudson? Lestrade?”
Molly’s brow furrowed. “I haven’t heard anything.” But she would have heard something if anything had happened.
Sherlock felt his eyes closing against his will, and the fog started rising again.
You should have thanked her for helping you, said John, inside his head.
Sherlock fell.
* * *
Sherlock sat on Molly’s sofa, studying the marks in the wall. About seventy years ago (but not more than seventy-seven) someone had fired a gun in this room. The bullet’s velocity had been slowed by something roughly the size of an average adult male. Sherlock itched to investigate more closely. He leaned forward, shifting his weight as he prepared to stand-then fell back against the sofa again, as the world seemed to tilt. If he stood, he would fall.
He sucked in air through his teeth.
The side-effects should have worn off by now. Later this evening, some of Mycroft’s people, disguised as removal men working for the erstwhile occupants of the downstairs flat, would take a box containing Sherlock to a safe-house. He couldn’t afford to be weak. There was no room for mistakes.
Molly’s cat jumped up onto the sofa and stared at him. Sherlock looked away. The insufferable creature prodded Sherlock’s thigh with a paw, and then demonstrated a remarkable degree of sense by deserting the sofa and sauntering off towards the kitchen.
The landing outside the flat creaked, and a key turned in the lock.
Molly was back then.
She’d been both reluctant and eager to leave him earlier. He’d simply assured her that he’d recovered enough that he could be left alone for a day, and reminded her too, that if she called in sick to work for a second day, people might start to grow suspicious, if they knew what to look for.
(Of course, people never did know what to look for.)
The moment that Molly stepped through the door, her hands full of shopping bags, Sherlock frowned.
“You’ve been to Baker Street,” he said. There was a stain on the cuff of her blouse; he recognised the shade as belonging to one of Mrs Hudson’s herbal teas. A slight whiff of the incense that Mrs Hudson used when her hip was particularly bad; that was there too.
Molly froze. “I thought-I thought you might like to hear about everybody. Nobody thought it was strange that I went there, and the press have let up a bit now.”
“I suppose they have.” The morning’s news had been all about a sex/bribery scandal involving a member of the cabinet, a children’s TV star, and an astonishingly large quantity of molasses. Sherlock rather suspected that Mycroft had organised that.
“I know you’ll probably say it was stupid to go there, but-”
Sherlock fixed his eyes on the patched-up bullet mark in the wall. “How were they?”
“Mrs Hudson was-she kept talking about how she was going to get rid of the bits of bodies you kept in the fridge. I, um, I said I’d take care of that for her.”
Sherlock found himself smiling for a moment.
“And-and I heard about Greg Lestrade too.”
“Yes?”
“There’s going to be an internal inquiry at Scotland Yard. He might get demoted, but-”
“Idiots,” said Sherlock, between gritted teeth. He’d have to see if Mycroft could do something about that, too.
“And I heard about John.”
“Yes?” Almost involuntarily, Sherlock turned to look at her.
Molly set her shopping on the floor and sat beside him on the sofa. “He left Baker Street,” she said softly. “Mrs Hudson said he came back for a few hours yesterday, then he packed his things in a suitcase and went to stay with his sister.”
Again, that twisting sensation in his gut.
“Mrs Hudson let me take a look around the flat,” Molly continued, her voice small. “So I could see what I’d need to take the body parts away.”
“You didn’t-”
I didn’t touch anything of yours,” she said quickly. “Well, except for the body parts.”
“Good.”
“But-” Molly paused and took a deep breath. “I did take something for you.”
“What?” Sherlock fixed his gaze on her, using a glare that most people found unsettling. “What did you take?”
Molly didn’t flinch. She met his gaze, and her small fingers encircled his wrist. “Something you need,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
Molly tugged on his wrist, pulling his hand upwards and turning it over so that his open palm faced the ceiling. She used her free hand to retrieve something from her jacket pocket, and a moment later, Sherlock felt her palm fold over his, with something cool and metallic between them.
His breath caught. Two stainless steel disks, with writing etched into the surface, linked by two ball-chains of different lengths. Sherlock knew what he would see even before Molly pulled her hand away.
A POS
TL236392C
WATSON
J H
OD
5NLDF
“You shouldn’t have taken these.” Rough. His voice was rough.
“He left them behind,” said Molly. “in the bottom of a drawer. Even if he does go back, I don’t think he’ll notice-”
“-and even if he did notice, he wouldn’t connect it with me. I know,” Sherlock finished for her. John had continued to wear his dog tags for exactly fifteen days after he’d moved into their flat, and Sherlock hadn’t seen them since. Even if John did go looking for them, he’d simply assume that he’d misplaced them somewhere.
“Then why is there a problem?”
“Someone else might notice.” The twisting pain in his stomach turned to heat, which seared upwards like a burning arrow. “And what made you think I could take them with me?”
“I didn’t-”
“I can’t keep anything that connects me to this life.” He ground his teeth together and spoke through them. “Nothing. Do you understand that, Molly?”
His hand clenched around the tiny disks; his fingernails dug into his palms.
“I just thought-”
“You didn’t think.” He spat the words out.
For a moment, Molly looked away. She drew a long shuddering breath, and Sherlock saw her jaw grow tense, and then relax. When she turned back towards him, her face was calm. “You called out for him,” she said.
“What?”
“When you were trying to wake up. You called out for him.”
Everything went still. The twisting was back; it was as though his innards wanted to tie themselves in knots, but he couldn’t move.
If he moved, he would fall.
“Sherlock?” Molly’s hand was over his. “Sherlock?”
Suddenly, he was breathing. Short, heavy breaths that rang loud in his ears. He forced himself to slow, slow everything down.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Must be-drugs in my system, still affecting me.”
“I’ll get you a glass of water, shall I?”
Sherlock nodded. A moment to recover himself. He still felt as though he might topple at any moment. He mustn’t-he couldn’t-allow himself this weakness.
His hand was still clenched. He allowed it to relax, to open. Two angry red arcs had imprinted on his palm.
Sherlock hooked a finger from each hand around the chains and held them up. They swung before his eyes in the single strip of light that fell between Molly’s mostly-closed curtains.
Foolish. There was no reason to-
In one swift movement, Sherlock looped the chains over his head, allowing them to settle around his neck.
“Oh!”
Sherlock turned his head at Molly’s exclamation. She stood at the kitchen door, a glass of water in hand.
“You’re wearing them,” she said softly.
“It would appear that I am.”
“I thought you said-”
“I know what I said.” Sherlock tucked the tags inside his shirt. “I’m taking them anyway.”
He could feel the metal against his chest, warm now, from the time it had spent in his hand.
He stood.
Molly was still looking at him from the kitchen door. Sherlock crossed the room in three steps, so that he stood in front of her. He considered her for a moment.
“Thank you, Molly,” he said.
That was good, said John.
For the first time since he’d jumped, the ground felt stable beneath him.
-------------------------------
Author's Note: My thanks to
iamshadow for suggesting John's dog tags as the personal item that Molly steals for Sherlock.