Round 3 Entries 21-30
Round 3 Entries 21-30
21
I want you to take me out, somewhere nice where you can wear a tie and I can dance all night. I want you to read me poetry in French and let me lay my head on your chest while you quote your favourite parts. You’d whisk me away Paris for a romantic weekend and we would stay out til the sun sets and just stare at the stars. We’d get caught in the rain going back to the hotel and you’d kiss me in the downpour like in that film you claimed to hate but watched with me anyway. I’d light candles and place them round the bath tub and we’d undress slowly and sink into the water, my back pressed to your chest as you caressed my skin and whispered that you loved me.
We’re walking hand in hand along a moonlit beach, or we’re sitting on the sofa eating ice cream and watching bad TV, or maybe you’ve been away for work and come home early to surprise me. And you say you’ve never felt this way before and I say I’ve been waiting all my life for this and then you get down on one knee.
I imagine that we’ll have a big house, with ivy creeping up the walls that you’ll spend your Sundays trying to get rid of even though I say it’s romantic. I’ll bring my cat and you’ll bring your baggage too but we’ll be happy because we’ll have each other. We’ll have three kids and call them all pretentious French names with normal middle ones in case they hate them. We’ll spend Saturday mornings watching football practises and ballet lessons and take everyone out for pizza after. We won’t be lonely any more, either of us, because we’ll have a house full of love and children and cats and you won’t be addicted to your work and I won’t be in love with someone who will never love me back.
I guess if you’re reading this it means I actually got the courage to leave it on your desk and not burn it or leave it folded in my pocket to take out and look out whenever I’m feeling wistful, like I did with all the others. It’s been five years now since that night we don’t talk about (we never talk about, why don’t we talk about it?) and so much has happened. The thing, where he left and we thought he was dead and you held me and told me it would be alright but then he wasn’t, and you got mad and I didn’t know how to tell you that it’s OK because that touch meant more to me than you could ever know.
And they’re fine now, those two, he’s happy and I’m not jealous, but only sometimes when I wish you’d look at me the way he looks at John. That madman is dead so you don’t need to worry about that anymore because it’s over and he can’t get to me now and it’s only bad memories. You used to look at me with worried eyes like you thought I was still haunted but lately it’s just regret and I think I miss the worry.
I want you to take me back to the place we got those ice creams from and I want to meet your brother I heard so much about. I want the screaming rows and the desperate make-up kisses, me ringing you at half past nine because you’re still at work and dinner’s gone cold. I’m done dancing around each other, you pretending that you’re just being friendly and me pretending that I’m not dying inside every time you walk past me with just a curt ‘hello’ and I can hear the words unsaid.
Right now you have two decisions, you can ignore this letter, screw it up in a ball and carry on with your paperwork, and I’ll never be any more to you than ‘Molly who was almost but never quite mine.’ Or you have a second option, you can stop what you’re doing right now and come home to me and I’ll make you dinner and you can tell me what criminals you’ve caught today and we’ll kiss and laugh and you’ll hold me close and I’ll never get to be that crazy old cat lady and you won’t be D.C.I Lestrade anymore, you’ll be D.C.I Lestrade who Molly Hooper is in love with.
22
Warnings: mention (not description!) of character death
It is March the 6th, 1991 and a 21 year old Mycroft Holmes is sitting on a bench in St James’s Park feeding the ducks. He’s just signed a particularly binding contract of employment and the bench, the park, even the ducks are by way of being a little joke with himself. He considers scoring “Guy Burgess was here” into the coarse wood by his thigh but contents himself with a tight and private smile instead. He’d rather be anonymously loyal than flamboyantly traitorous anyway.
His birthday has passed unremarked by anyone but his new employers. He smiles wryly: at least his new career makes a virtue of solitude.
It’s March the 6th 2001 and a 31 year old Mycroft Holmes is sitting on a bench in St James’s Park, feeding the ducks. After a while he leaves. No one notices him. No one ever does.
It’s March the 6th 2011 and a 41 year old Mycroft Holmes is sitting on a bench in St James’s Park, feeding the ducks. He tries to broadcast his desire for solitude as he notices someone in his peripheral vision making a bee-line for his bench.
“Mycroft!” someone calls and he knows, oh he knows, that this can’t be intended for anyone else. It’s hard to stay anonymous with such an ostentatious banner of a name.
He looks up and sees John Watson walking towards him with two cups of coffee and a bag of pastries.
“Happy birthday,” John says confidentially. Mycroft smiles civilly and invites him to sit with a gesture.
It’s March 6th 2021 and a 51 year old Mycroft Holmes is sitting on a bench in St James’s Park, feeding the ducks and waiting for John. He picks at the worn and peeling grain of the wood like a man more nervous and more impatient than Mycroft Holmes could ever be. He smiles as he hears his name called and looks up slowly, like they have all the time in the world.
It’s March the 6th 2023 and John sits on a pristine new bench in St James’s park, marvelling at the smoothness of the varnish. It feels wrong beneath his ungloved hand. He feeds the ducks. He drinks his coffee, seeming to toast an unseen companion as he does.
As he rises, he swipes at the small brass plaque on the backrest with his sleeve. The inscription reads: “To the Memory of MH. Loyal to the end.”
23
The whiff of chlorine was overpowering, making Sherlock's eyes water as he entered the deserted swimming pool. It was as if they were trying to erase the metaphorical taint of death from the water through the addition of chemicals. The pool reopened to the public the following day, and Sherlock was in no doubt that Carl Powers would be a footnote in the local newspaper by the weekend. Boy [aged 14] drowned in pool. Terrible accident; blah, blah.
“Hurry it up, Sherlock, we don't have much time,” Mycroft said, tapping his brogue clad foot on the tiled floor. Mycroft had affected a rather bohemian style of dress since he started Oxford. Patches graced the elbows of this jacket, and he seemed to wear nothing but corduroys and aran sweaters. Even his hair was longer than it should be, Sherlock thought, and he rather hoped it was just a stage he was going through. It was beginning to get embarrassing.
“You know as well as I that the boy was murdered,” he said aloud.
“That's hardly the point, Sherlock,” Mycroft said. “And mother will have a fit if she finds out I've brought you here. She thinks I've taken you to the cinema for the afternoon.”
Sherlock sniffed, Mycroft was, in his opinion, far too old to be afraid of Mother, and what was the use of having a brother old enough to sign you out of school over the weekend, if one didn't take advantage of it.
Mycroft, it seemed, had already surmised the direction of his thoughts. “If you don't hurry up, you'll have to rely on good old Uncle Jeremy for these little school term excursions. Mother and father are not due back in the country until Easter.”
“Fine, be like that,” Sherlock said, scowling at the murder scene as he prowled the edge of the pool. If there had been any evidence here, it had been long been washed away. The trail was cold.
“I want to see the locker room,” Sherlock said aloud.
“And what are you expecting to find? The missing trainers in a secret compartment?” Mycroft asked sarcastically. “We have to go, Sherlock, I told the security guard we'd only be ten minutes.”
“So slip him another ten quid,” Sherlock said.
“Sherlock” Mycroft said firmly. “We need to make the 7pm train.”
“That's it?” Sherlock demanded. “We're just going to let this slide and let someone get away with murder.”
“I'm a college student and you're still in a school uniform, Sherlock, although I suspect you tend to forget that minor detail most of the time,” Mycroft said. “We're not in a position to influence criminal investigations.”
“Not yet,” Sherlock muttered.
“Thinking of joining the police force, brother.” Mycroft teased, quirking an eyebrow.
Sherlock snorted in answer. “Hardly,” he said, as he stalked in the direction of the locker room.
“Oy! Times up!” a voice called out, and both brothers turned to eye the security guard who'd burst through the door. “The manager is back, boys, time to leave,” he added, almost apologetically.
Sherlock made a noise of exasperation and Mycroft sighed. “Come along, ” he said. “You can play amateur sleuth another time.”
Sherlock glared at Mycroft, he really was very irritating. “No need to be facetious,” he said as he turned for the exit.
“Oh, fabulous,” Mycroft said, “Does this mean I'm going to be sent to Coventry for the entire trip back?”
Sherlock didn't answer, although he was well aware Mycroft's words were a pre-emptive strike. Now that he'd said it, any silence on Sherlock's behalf would be construed as childishness. He squinted against the sun as they stepped onto the busy London street, and then had a thought. He smirked.
“You know that that wasn't a half bad idea,” he said.
“What wasn't?” Mycroft asked warily.
“Becoming an amateur sleuth,” Sherlock said.
“Oh please, you'd be bored within a week,” Mycroft scoffed. “It's not like the movies, Sherlock. Private detectives spend their time spying on errant husbands and searching for lost pets.”
“Well then, I won't be a private detective,” he said. “I'll be a...consulting detective. Helping the police with their more interesting enquiries”
“There's no such thing, Sherlock.”
Sherlock smiled. “Of course not,” he agreed. “Not yet.”
24
“The last girl told me that you used to do something very important for the government,” she said, changing the bedclothes with practised dexterity. Her hospital corners were particularly sharp. From an armchair behind her, his mouth pinched into a smile of silent approval.
Having received no reply, she stood up straight and turned to him. “She thought you were a spy.” He gave a hoarse laugh.
“I occupied a very minor position in the civil service,” he wheezed, pausing mid-sentence to draw deeply from the oxygen that flowed through acrylic tubes into his nose.
“That’s exactly what you would say, if you’d been a spy.”
“Not now,” he replied. “It’s been long enough now. Or it would have been, if I had been a spy. Which I wasn’t.”
It was her turn to laugh. It made the dark curls of her hair quiver. “You’re clever. The last girl - she said you were clever. She wasn’t wrong.”
The agency sent a new nurse every week. Some barely said a word to him, and he didn’t mind this, but Becky wanted to talk. After she brought him the newspaper each morning, she would perch on the end of the bed and start a conversation. She told him about her boyfriend, Simon, who had a habit of drinking away the money she tried to save. Fifty years ago, he would have had a quiet word with Simon. He couldn’t do that now.
She asked questions too. Not about his work, but about how long he’d lived in Kent, about the book on his bedside table, about his family.
“No children,” he told her. It was warm for May. Soft afternoon light seeped through the open window. “I had other responsibilities.”
“No brothers or sisters?” She rolled back his sleeve, revealing a sallow, withered forearm. If it disgusted her, she didn’t show it. It disgusted him.
“I had a younger brother. He died.”
“I’m sorry.” She was sorry. She had frozen with the uncapped needle hanging limply in her fingers.
“It was a long time ago,” he reassured her. Perhaps prompted by his tone, she quickly injected the fluid beneath his skin, manoeuvring the needle as neatly as she’d made the bed.
“Were you close?”
“Yes.” Because whatever Sherlock would have said, that was the truth. You couldn’t watch someone’s every move and not be close.
Suddenly, he was asking, “Would you like to see him?”
She probably expected him to bring out one of those old-fashioned photo frames that stored multiple images, or perhaps even an actual printed photograph, yellowed by time like his skin. Instead, he asked her to take him back to the bed. Once there, he asked for a small remote from the bedside table. At the press of a button, a screen rose from the foot of the bed and a black and white picture appeared on the screen.
It was a poor quality recording, but two men could clearly be seen in what was a living room of a house or flat. One was sitting in a chair watching the other, who was pacing about the room, waving his arms in frantic gestures.
“I don’t need to ask which one he is,” Becky said, pointing to Sherlock. “Who’s the other man?”
“His friend.”
She didn’t ask any more questions. She sat quietly and watched as, fifty years before, Sherlock and John went about their everyday lives - arguing in the sitting room, laughing in the landing, drinking tea into the small hours. She drank it all in until the video cut out, leaving only a black screen behind.
Becky went downstairs to put the kettle on, leaving him wondering why he’d shown her footage that he’d never shown to anyone else. Even John had not seen it. John, who, after it had happened, had asked for photographs and smiled when Mycroft found one of Sherlock, in his twenties, staring angrily into the lens. In any case, John was now dead. Lestrade was dead too; a sudden heart attack two decades ago.
Had he shown her the film because he’d left it too late, because no one else remained to see it? Years ago, he would have known why he’d done it; he, more than Sherlock even, made a career of knowing why. Now, he saw everything through a twilit haze, as if his life was lingering at an asymptotic dusk. The only thing now was to wait for a sunset that seemed to be perpetually deferred.
25
Sherlock is three, smart, and a little spoiled. He’s picky with his food, he’s not scared of the dark anymore and now has his own room. When his brother is with him, Sherlock is Mycroft's shadow.
Now Sherlock is scared and crying, because he doesn't like hospitals; he knows that people, good people like his Nana, go there and don't come back. He knows what the words “she's in heaven” really mean that he's never going to see her again. Mycroft explained it to him, and now it's him in the hospital. If Mycroft doesn't come out Sherlock will never forgive him.
Mycroft is in his hospital bed when their mother takes Sherlock to visit his older brother. Mycroft doesn’t look sick like their Nana, he's not mad at Sherlock. He starts crying again.
"I don't want to murder you." Sherlock sobs, and his mother kneels down to wipe his little face with her handkerchief. Sherlock likes it because it smells like her. She lets him keep it.
"You didn't kill me, Sherlock." Mycroft is almost thirteen, and so much taller than Sherlock. He's kind and protects him and shows him interesting things. Sherlock really likes his brother.
Mummy helps Sherlock sit on the bed beside his brother's stretched legs. One of them has a bandage on it, and Sherlock looks at it guiltily. He knows what’s under the bandage, too.
"Do you want to see the stitches?" Mycroft asks, and his mother shoots him warning look, but it’s a harmless thing, and she relents.
Sherlock nods, he's always been curious and this is the first time he's had the chance to see a stitched wound. Mycroft pulls back the bandage and shows him. His mother inspects it too, and is pleased at how it's healing. "Does it hurt?" Sherlock inquires, little fingers stopping short of touching the abused skin.
"Very little," Mycroft replies, then he ruffles his brother's hair and their mother smiles approvingly.
"Would you like a hot chocolate, boys?" she asks. The cafeteria is not very far and she knows she can leave them alone for a little while. She’ll have the nurse keep an eye on them from the door. The answer is yes and after giving a kiss on the forehead to each child she leaves the room.
"I'm sorry I hurt you," Sherlock says, voice trembling a bit under the pressure of more incoming tears.
"I know you didn't mean to," Mycroft replies with a ready smile, "at least I'm going to have something to remind me of you when I go to boarding school."
Sherlock knows that the new boarding school is far away, and that he won’t see Mycroft as often as he wants, but he says nothing. He hugs his older brother and vows to be strong and not cry when he misses him.
More than three decades later, only few people are aware of that tiny scar on Mycroft's thigh; fewer still have asked how he got it, and Mycroft never told anyone.
He barely remembers it’s there unless he catches the short ridge of the scar in the mirror or under his fingers, and then he remember about it. He sees the terrified expression on Sherlock’s face as he notices that the knife he was playing with was sticking out of his brother’s thigh, the tears running down his little cheeks, the burn of the wound and the strange sense of detachment due to the shock.
He clearly remembers worrying that his mother would be upset about the blood staining his trousers.
Lestrade never asks about it, even if sometimes he strokes it when they’re in bed and he’s lost in thoughts. He acknowledges it without asking questions, knowing that a physical scar often is linked to an emotional one. He doesn’t press the issue because when Mycroft is reminded about it he doesn’t look haunted. He smiles sadly to his memories and moves on.
Mycroft makes coffee for the two of them and takes it to bed. “Greg,” he starts, giving himself time to turn back and change the subject if his courage fails. “I want to tell you an old story.”
Lestrade makes himself comfortable against the pillows and holds him close to his chest. His heart is beating steadily and it’s soothing. “Sure.”
“It’s the story of how I got the scar.”
26
"Stay close."
Mycroft received the mild reminder with disinterest. It was rhetorical: he has no intention of wandering off, seeing as he carried no currency of his own. He was only eleven. What purpose would it serve if he strayed?
Nevertheless, he caught eyes flitting towards him on occasion to verify he was indeed obeying. Mycroft stepped closer to his mother, the shopping crinkling noisily between her dress and his arm.
"Stay close," his mother murmured again when someone knocked into her, sending her a half-step closer.
"Yes, Mum," Mycroft dutifully replied. He resisted taking a step back to preserve his toes from her heels. Mycroft bit back a sigh; he didn't understand why he had to accompany her to the plaza on a Saturday. Between the bland upper Third set readings and his tutor’s unimaginative dedication to rote maths worksheets and lengthy Latin translations (never mind that Mycroft had demonstrated his mastery of the second declension weeks ago), he had precious little time to pursue his own curricula. And just when he’d gotten to a most instructive passage of The Prince.
Mummy nodded distractedly as she examined a hat Mycroft hoped was for the little baby in the pram, rocked by the nanny sitting on the edge of the stone fountain. He spared a glance towards the newest Holmes with a wrinkle of his nose. The adults did not seem to mind having a baby, even though it meant foul smells, endless clutter and ludicrously excessive compliments and praise, as if the baby was borne not of biology, but shaped by something more impressive. The newborn itself, at least, was surprisingly quiet.
Another murmur from Mummy alerted Mycroft he had not followed as diligently as he should. She was already by the next rack, inspecting the quality of the stitching on a suit jacket far too formal to be practical, pointless for one who thus far had demonstrated few talents apart from the ability to sick up on itself.
Mycroft took the obligatory shuffle towards Mummy, his eyes on the fountain. Mrs. Carter was chatting with a man in a suit a bit too short in the arms, too long on the legs. He stood there, map folded to a section, finger pointed specifically at a spot as if he already knew it was there, yet he asked for directions, head canted away from the nanny as if he was truly puzzled. The nanny, nodding, smiling, uncurled her hand around the pram's handle and turned to point towards a street clearly marked in the distance-
"Mycroft!"
Later, in the police station, Mycroft would explain why he dashed across the street and swung all of Mummy's shopping at the knees of a man bent to reach his arms into the pram. Later, after the nanny stopped sobbing "Oh my God. I didn't see him. I didn't see him!", Mycroft would describe the other man, the one who kicked him, knocking him into the pram and turning the carriage, the baby, and Mycroft into the cobblestone street before taking off with his conspirator.
Later.
For now, Mycroft cradled the baby, an icepack on his throbbing knee, and watched the adults bicker and cast blame. Sherlock, who hadn't cried the entire time, blinked up at him with dark, bottomless eyes, like Mycroft was a curious object orbiting his crib. Tiny fingers wriggled up out of the blankets, reaching and grabbing his chin, finding it disinteresting then letting go. The nanny, perhaps compensating for her lack of vigilance, had swaddled his brother tightly, pinning the baby's legs. But contrary to what one might expect, Mycroft's brother merely screwed up his face and squirmed as the world around him wailed and yelled and shouted and threatened helpless babies, easily snatched by strangers. And for the first time since Sherlock was brought home all pink and tiny, Mycroft understood what his mother meant.
"Stay close," Mycroft murmured as he tightened his arms.
The End
27
She wasn't raised to believe in abortions. She has nothing against them, and she's considered it many times, considering her age. But when it comes down to it, she's never had a child, and even knowing that she won't keep this one, she cannot help but know that she would do everything to protect it.
She makes the stipulations that she must know the parents. She must have photos. She has no right to make such demands, but she is fortunate to find people who promise to do those very things for her.
She briefly considers keeping the baby, but then she remembers her husband. She remembers the kind of man she has married.
She tells him she's going away to have an abortion and to make sure this never happens again. She gets him to sign papers for the adoption without him knowing. It's the one thing she has slipped by him.
So she travels before she starts to show. It's the first time in years she's been alone. It's like a mini-holiday, except none of her clothes fit and she's constantly ill. The doctor checks, and everything is fine though.
The birth itself is nothing she wishes to remember, and everything she hopes she doesn't forget. He's a small quiet child, and she names him James, after her grandfather.
She gets him for a whole week. She talks to him mostly, trying to tell him everything she wants to say for a lifetime.
She doesn't cry when his parents pick him up. Neither does he.
"Be brave," she whispers. "Be good."
They send pictures, and brief letters. She hides them behind the flour, because the kitchen is the one place she knows her husband will not go.
He turns into a bright child. Smart, for his age. Advanced, they say.
She almost cries in joy, but she holds back, for fear that her husband will see.
She knows most people would have divorced by now, walked out of the door. But she made a promise before God, and looking into her son's eyes, she remembers every reason she married him in the first place. She takes care of other children, taking in boarders for money. She mothers them as much as she can, hoping one day she can mother her own son.
The first time he finds her, he is sixteen. Brooding and moody and perfect. She turns him away at the door.
"You can't be here," she says, and closes the door before she pulls him in and never lets him go.
It's like that for many years, brief encounters that frighten and delight her. He grows tall and thin, her James, silent and strange.
When her husband is finally caught in a misdeed, they have tea.
He asks her why, and she tells him. He nods and thanks her, saying that his parents were good to him. Gave him the finest education possible.
"What's going to happen to my father?"
"I don't know," she says. "And I don't care."
"I see," he says, and no more.
He shakes her hand and kisses her cheek before leaving.
There's a bit of sadness and regret, because she loves him, but only in that way you love a distant relative. The phone rings.
"This is she," she says. "I'm sorry, you what? You have evidence that could convict my husband? Who is this? You're at the door?"
She opens the door, and it's another tall, brooding young man. She's not sure if her heart can take it.
"Mrs. Hudson?"
"Yes?"
The man holds out his hand. "Sherlock Holmes. I was just on the phone with you."
"Oh."
Later, she'll realize she still sees James on the corner, watching her intently. Later she'll understand why this Moriarty is so focused on Sherlock. She doesn't blame him.
But in the moment, he's just another boy, just another lost soul.
28
Sally knelt on the cold bathroom floor, fingers splayed in the sticky blood and chest heaving. She wanted to be ill, but she knew (some tiny voice in the back of her mind, some loud whisper in her ear) that would contaminate the scene, make it harder for the coppers. Instead, she struggled to her feet, pushed herself to the door and out into the corridor. The phone seemed miles away. Downstairs, the tv blared some chat show and it made her teeth ache, made her clench her jaw so tightly to hold in her sobs, her screams. She sat down at the end of the corridor, phone in her lap, and waited, staring at the bathroom door, waiting for her mother to step out of the bathroom, waiting for her to say everything was fine and not to be so silly, wouldn’t she rather have some ice cream? The chat show turned into a soap opera and Sally closed her eyes. She had to call. Her mother wasn’t coming out.
The red blanket was the worst, she decided. It reminded her of the blood, the sticky and drying blood all over the bathroom floor. An ambulance idled at the kerb, the paramedics in no great rush. The police were milling about the tiny yard as well and Sally wanted to scream. There was a rattle, a thump, a muffled curse and she leaned around the policewoman in front of her to see what was happening.
“Hey.” A tall, dark haired man with greying temples stepped into her line of sight, nudging the policewoman away. “My name is Sargent Lestrade but you can call me Greg, if you’d like. You’re Sally?”
“Yeah,” she sniffed, her voice thick and fractured. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” She already knew the answer.
“Tell me what happened, Sally.” Greg crouched down to look her in the eyes and while he did not smile, he offered her a kind expression, a handful of tissues.
“I come home from school, right? Come home and the door was open so I figured she was mopping with the ammonia. She opens up the house when she does that. But there weren’t a smell, was there? I went looking for her an’ found her in the loo. She...someone...” She felt herself crumble from the inside out, her body convulsing over her hands, pressing into her navel, feeling the invisible cord that was once a conduit, severed forever now. It ached, that spot behind her navel, that spot where her mother pulsed once upon a time. “Who,” she sobbed, broken and sharp, “did this?”
“Listen to me, Sally,” the sergeant was saying, voice close to her ear, tissues pressed against her cheeks. “This is terrible, worse than terrible, but you need to tell me everything that you noticed. Tell me about your entire day, starting with when you woke up this morning and don’t stop until you get to now, to where I came up and introduced myself, alright?”
She nodded slowly, closed her eyes, and began. She felt a bit ridiculous, snotty and sobbing and crying, body shaking, telling this man about how Rich McAllister dumped her in front of the entire sixth form, how her mum had given her money to buy milk on the way home but she’d spent it on lip gloss to make Rich’s new girl jealous of how pretty she was, how she thought that maybe she could go to Sainsbury’s and get the milk and her mum would be alive when she got back... It all came spilling out and when she was done, her breath hitched on a sob. “Sergeant, will that help you catch who done this to my mum?”
He did smile then, a thin and brittle expression. “I think it might, Sally. You’re very observant.” He handed her the blanket that she did not know she had dropped and rose to his feet, waving over another officer and rattling something off, something Sally barely caught about checking the pawn shops for the missing jewelry, about a copycat. She barely heard any of it because the ambulance was pulling away, her mother inside. Lestrade was back at her side, telling her that she would need to make a formal statement soon.
“Does it feel good? Catching people who do these things?”
He stared, startled, before answering. “Yes. Very much.”
Sally nodded. “Right. Take me to the station, then.”
29
Warnings: multiple main character deaths & mentions of suicide
I am tired, so very tired. My bones seem to ache with weariness.
I have been doing this for so long now - spinning my webs, guiding people, masterminding entire governments - that I barely remember anything else.
I entered the service young and foolish, secure in the knowledge that I was going to make the world a better place, help people, make a difference. I was such a child.
Years passed. Essentially nothing had changed, except perhaps a little of my naivety had rubbed off. I began to think my role was to maintain the status quo, to prevent things from getting any worse. I didn’t understand, even then.
Famines, floods and four seemingly never-ending wars later and I realised that the most I could aim for was to stop the entire world from descending into hell. As I sit reading my latest briefings on current affairs, I’m not convinced I have achieved my aim.
When I signed up I knew that what I had agreed to do would make me a target. I knew it would make those close to me targets too. I thought I was invincible and oh so clever. I thought I could build such complex shields, such intricate barriers around my loved ones that no one could ever get through. Protect them as I protected myself.
First they took Anthea. All the warning signs were there but I failed to see them until too late. I rang her, trying to stop what was by then inevitable. She answered, “Hello My-“ and then the phone went dead. A ‘gas explosion’ was reported that evening on the news. Her body was identified by her dental records.
I still do not know whether they took Mummy. A morphine overdose in a terminally ill cancer patient led to the coroner pronouncing ‘suicide’. Had she decided the pain was too much, decided she couldn’t bear living any more, couldn’t even bear one more day to say goodbye to her sons? Or was it their hand on the button, flooding her veins with the drug, tearing her away from us. I do not know, and I was too cowardly to try to find out. It’s too late now.
Then they took John. They had broken his body and very nearly destroyed his spirit before I could find them and rescue him. I lost both him and Sherlock because of it. They fled Baker Street. Went into hiding. Hiding from me. I haven’t tried to find them. They don’t deserve the heartache and misery that follows me around.
I carried on with my work. Alone. Like a spider brooding in the dark I still wove my intricate webs. Charming, persuading, manipulating, more from habit than any real sense of purpose. Perhaps I have made a difference. Perhaps a few lives are better than they would have been. Perhaps some conflicts that would have been never came to fruition because of my labours. I will never know.
Tonight they are coming for me.
I find I welcome them.
30
John is not long out of school, and only recently deployed on active duty, the first time he truly shoots with the intent to kill.
It's not the first time he's used a gun, of course. Far from it, in fact, as he's been trained for that very act since he first began to show an aptitude for marksmanship, but every squeeze of the trigger prior to the crystalline moment when he fires the shot he knows will end a man's life was just build-up. It feels like the culmination of something, something both simple and grand, like he's finally released a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
He swears to himself, as he lowers the gun and looks down at his calm, steady hands, that he will never tell anyone how good it felt.
Both John and his superiors find, as he begins to rise through the ranks, that his skill with a firearm makes him almost horrifically over-qualified to be just a run-of-the-mill field medic. This, he knows, is why he's shipped out to high-risk areas, places with a lot of violence, where army doctors need to know how to do more than just return fire while tending the wounded. He's happy to take these assignments, the ones other soldiers dread and that earn him angry emails from Harry, demanding to know why he's so careless with his life (and doesn't he know what it would do to their mum if he got killed out there?), for reasons he finds impossible to articulate. No one back home, he's sure, will ever be able to understand that he needs the danger and thrives on being that particular variety of useful.
It's hard to forget you're alive when you spend your days doing even the most mundane things to the sound of distant gunfire, and the threat that it could move in closer at any time.
But he keeps his promise to himself. As he moves from one post to another, trying to avoid long returns to England and the inevitable haze that settles over him there, the violence he finds disconcertingly easy is always only a moment away. But he never breathes a word of how it feels to be the one to pull the trigger. That, too, is something his friends and family back home will never, ever understand.
It's not that he's a psychopath, or serial killer waiting to happen, though. He feels absolutely no compunction to open fire on London commuters, or strangers he passes on the sidewalk, or people milling around in shops. But on the battlefield, in the middle of an invasion, or a war? That's something else entirely and he finds that he loves it as he stands still and steady and brimming with so much life he's amazed it doesn't spill out of him, bright and sharp as shrapnel.
He doesn't know it yet, as he squints in the sun and keeps his gun close at hand, but the day will come when he won't be quick enough to fire first. When he'll be trying too hard to save a man's life to take cover or lift his own gun. On that day, which he has not imagined because no one ever really believes it'll happen to them, no matter how many times they see it happen to others, he'll be given a back-handed blessing in the form of a ruined shoulder, a limp that shouldn't be real, and the one man in all the world who will not only believe him when he haltingly explains his attachment to the battlefield, but who will understand.
He has no way of knowing this, no hint of prescience to foretell something so many years away, but it will be the single greatest gift he ever receives.
Entries 31-38 and Poll
21
I want you to take me out, somewhere nice where you can wear a tie and I can dance all night. I want you to read me poetry in French and let me lay my head on your chest while you quote your favourite parts. You’d whisk me away Paris for a romantic weekend and we would stay out til the sun sets and just stare at the stars. We’d get caught in the rain going back to the hotel and you’d kiss me in the downpour like in that film you claimed to hate but watched with me anyway. I’d light candles and place them round the bath tub and we’d undress slowly and sink into the water, my back pressed to your chest as you caressed my skin and whispered that you loved me.
We’re walking hand in hand along a moonlit beach, or we’re sitting on the sofa eating ice cream and watching bad TV, or maybe you’ve been away for work and come home early to surprise me. And you say you’ve never felt this way before and I say I’ve been waiting all my life for this and then you get down on one knee.
I imagine that we’ll have a big house, with ivy creeping up the walls that you’ll spend your Sundays trying to get rid of even though I say it’s romantic. I’ll bring my cat and you’ll bring your baggage too but we’ll be happy because we’ll have each other. We’ll have three kids and call them all pretentious French names with normal middle ones in case they hate them. We’ll spend Saturday mornings watching football practises and ballet lessons and take everyone out for pizza after. We won’t be lonely any more, either of us, because we’ll have a house full of love and children and cats and you won’t be addicted to your work and I won’t be in love with someone who will never love me back.
I guess if you’re reading this it means I actually got the courage to leave it on your desk and not burn it or leave it folded in my pocket to take out and look out whenever I’m feeling wistful, like I did with all the others. It’s been five years now since that night we don’t talk about (we never talk about, why don’t we talk about it?) and so much has happened. The thing, where he left and we thought he was dead and you held me and told me it would be alright but then he wasn’t, and you got mad and I didn’t know how to tell you that it’s OK because that touch meant more to me than you could ever know.
And they’re fine now, those two, he’s happy and I’m not jealous, but only sometimes when I wish you’d look at me the way he looks at John. That madman is dead so you don’t need to worry about that anymore because it’s over and he can’t get to me now and it’s only bad memories. You used to look at me with worried eyes like you thought I was still haunted but lately it’s just regret and I think I miss the worry.
I want you to take me back to the place we got those ice creams from and I want to meet your brother I heard so much about. I want the screaming rows and the desperate make-up kisses, me ringing you at half past nine because you’re still at work and dinner’s gone cold. I’m done dancing around each other, you pretending that you’re just being friendly and me pretending that I’m not dying inside every time you walk past me with just a curt ‘hello’ and I can hear the words unsaid.
Right now you have two decisions, you can ignore this letter, screw it up in a ball and carry on with your paperwork, and I’ll never be any more to you than ‘Molly who was almost but never quite mine.’ Or you have a second option, you can stop what you’re doing right now and come home to me and I’ll make you dinner and you can tell me what criminals you’ve caught today and we’ll kiss and laugh and you’ll hold me close and I’ll never get to be that crazy old cat lady and you won’t be D.C.I Lestrade anymore, you’ll be D.C.I Lestrade who Molly Hooper is in love with.
22
Warnings: mention (not description!) of character death
It is March the 6th, 1991 and a 21 year old Mycroft Holmes is sitting on a bench in St James’s Park feeding the ducks. He’s just signed a particularly binding contract of employment and the bench, the park, even the ducks are by way of being a little joke with himself. He considers scoring “Guy Burgess was here” into the coarse wood by his thigh but contents himself with a tight and private smile instead. He’d rather be anonymously loyal than flamboyantly traitorous anyway.
His birthday has passed unremarked by anyone but his new employers. He smiles wryly: at least his new career makes a virtue of solitude.
It’s March the 6th 2001 and a 31 year old Mycroft Holmes is sitting on a bench in St James’s Park, feeding the ducks. After a while he leaves. No one notices him. No one ever does.
It’s March the 6th 2011 and a 41 year old Mycroft Holmes is sitting on a bench in St James’s Park, feeding the ducks. He tries to broadcast his desire for solitude as he notices someone in his peripheral vision making a bee-line for his bench.
“Mycroft!” someone calls and he knows, oh he knows, that this can’t be intended for anyone else. It’s hard to stay anonymous with such an ostentatious banner of a name.
He looks up and sees John Watson walking towards him with two cups of coffee and a bag of pastries.
“Happy birthday,” John says confidentially. Mycroft smiles civilly and invites him to sit with a gesture.
It’s March 6th 2021 and a 51 year old Mycroft Holmes is sitting on a bench in St James’s Park, feeding the ducks and waiting for John. He picks at the worn and peeling grain of the wood like a man more nervous and more impatient than Mycroft Holmes could ever be. He smiles as he hears his name called and looks up slowly, like they have all the time in the world.
It’s March the 6th 2023 and John sits on a pristine new bench in St James’s park, marvelling at the smoothness of the varnish. It feels wrong beneath his ungloved hand. He feeds the ducks. He drinks his coffee, seeming to toast an unseen companion as he does.
As he rises, he swipes at the small brass plaque on the backrest with his sleeve. The inscription reads: “To the Memory of MH. Loyal to the end.”
23
The whiff of chlorine was overpowering, making Sherlock's eyes water as he entered the deserted swimming pool. It was as if they were trying to erase the metaphorical taint of death from the water through the addition of chemicals. The pool reopened to the public the following day, and Sherlock was in no doubt that Carl Powers would be a footnote in the local newspaper by the weekend. Boy [aged 14] drowned in pool. Terrible accident; blah, blah.
“Hurry it up, Sherlock, we don't have much time,” Mycroft said, tapping his brogue clad foot on the tiled floor. Mycroft had affected a rather bohemian style of dress since he started Oxford. Patches graced the elbows of this jacket, and he seemed to wear nothing but corduroys and aran sweaters. Even his hair was longer than it should be, Sherlock thought, and he rather hoped it was just a stage he was going through. It was beginning to get embarrassing.
“You know as well as I that the boy was murdered,” he said aloud.
“That's hardly the point, Sherlock,” Mycroft said. “And mother will have a fit if she finds out I've brought you here. She thinks I've taken you to the cinema for the afternoon.”
Sherlock sniffed, Mycroft was, in his opinion, far too old to be afraid of Mother, and what was the use of having a brother old enough to sign you out of school over the weekend, if one didn't take advantage of it.
Mycroft, it seemed, had already surmised the direction of his thoughts. “If you don't hurry up, you'll have to rely on good old Uncle Jeremy for these little school term excursions. Mother and father are not due back in the country until Easter.”
“Fine, be like that,” Sherlock said, scowling at the murder scene as he prowled the edge of the pool. If there had been any evidence here, it had been long been washed away. The trail was cold.
“I want to see the locker room,” Sherlock said aloud.
“And what are you expecting to find? The missing trainers in a secret compartment?” Mycroft asked sarcastically. “We have to go, Sherlock, I told the security guard we'd only be ten minutes.”
“So slip him another ten quid,” Sherlock said.
“Sherlock” Mycroft said firmly. “We need to make the 7pm train.”
“That's it?” Sherlock demanded. “We're just going to let this slide and let someone get away with murder.”
“I'm a college student and you're still in a school uniform, Sherlock, although I suspect you tend to forget that minor detail most of the time,” Mycroft said. “We're not in a position to influence criminal investigations.”
“Not yet,” Sherlock muttered.
“Thinking of joining the police force, brother.” Mycroft teased, quirking an eyebrow.
Sherlock snorted in answer. “Hardly,” he said, as he stalked in the direction of the locker room.
“Oy! Times up!” a voice called out, and both brothers turned to eye the security guard who'd burst through the door. “The manager is back, boys, time to leave,” he added, almost apologetically.
Sherlock made a noise of exasperation and Mycroft sighed. “Come along, ” he said. “You can play amateur sleuth another time.”
Sherlock glared at Mycroft, he really was very irritating. “No need to be facetious,” he said as he turned for the exit.
“Oh, fabulous,” Mycroft said, “Does this mean I'm going to be sent to Coventry for the entire trip back?”
Sherlock didn't answer, although he was well aware Mycroft's words were a pre-emptive strike. Now that he'd said it, any silence on Sherlock's behalf would be construed as childishness. He squinted against the sun as they stepped onto the busy London street, and then had a thought. He smirked.
“You know that that wasn't a half bad idea,” he said.
“What wasn't?” Mycroft asked warily.
“Becoming an amateur sleuth,” Sherlock said.
“Oh please, you'd be bored within a week,” Mycroft scoffed. “It's not like the movies, Sherlock. Private detectives spend their time spying on errant husbands and searching for lost pets.”
“Well then, I won't be a private detective,” he said. “I'll be a...consulting detective. Helping the police with their more interesting enquiries”
“There's no such thing, Sherlock.”
Sherlock smiled. “Of course not,” he agreed. “Not yet.”
24
“The last girl told me that you used to do something very important for the government,” she said, changing the bedclothes with practised dexterity. Her hospital corners were particularly sharp. From an armchair behind her, his mouth pinched into a smile of silent approval.
Having received no reply, she stood up straight and turned to him. “She thought you were a spy.” He gave a hoarse laugh.
“I occupied a very minor position in the civil service,” he wheezed, pausing mid-sentence to draw deeply from the oxygen that flowed through acrylic tubes into his nose.
“That’s exactly what you would say, if you’d been a spy.”
“Not now,” he replied. “It’s been long enough now. Or it would have been, if I had been a spy. Which I wasn’t.”
It was her turn to laugh. It made the dark curls of her hair quiver. “You’re clever. The last girl - she said you were clever. She wasn’t wrong.”
The agency sent a new nurse every week. Some barely said a word to him, and he didn’t mind this, but Becky wanted to talk. After she brought him the newspaper each morning, she would perch on the end of the bed and start a conversation. She told him about her boyfriend, Simon, who had a habit of drinking away the money she tried to save. Fifty years ago, he would have had a quiet word with Simon. He couldn’t do that now.
She asked questions too. Not about his work, but about how long he’d lived in Kent, about the book on his bedside table, about his family.
“No children,” he told her. It was warm for May. Soft afternoon light seeped through the open window. “I had other responsibilities.”
“No brothers or sisters?” She rolled back his sleeve, revealing a sallow, withered forearm. If it disgusted her, she didn’t show it. It disgusted him.
“I had a younger brother. He died.”
“I’m sorry.” She was sorry. She had frozen with the uncapped needle hanging limply in her fingers.
“It was a long time ago,” he reassured her. Perhaps prompted by his tone, she quickly injected the fluid beneath his skin, manoeuvring the needle as neatly as she’d made the bed.
“Were you close?”
“Yes.” Because whatever Sherlock would have said, that was the truth. You couldn’t watch someone’s every move and not be close.
Suddenly, he was asking, “Would you like to see him?”
She probably expected him to bring out one of those old-fashioned photo frames that stored multiple images, or perhaps even an actual printed photograph, yellowed by time like his skin. Instead, he asked her to take him back to the bed. Once there, he asked for a small remote from the bedside table. At the press of a button, a screen rose from the foot of the bed and a black and white picture appeared on the screen.
It was a poor quality recording, but two men could clearly be seen in what was a living room of a house or flat. One was sitting in a chair watching the other, who was pacing about the room, waving his arms in frantic gestures.
“I don’t need to ask which one he is,” Becky said, pointing to Sherlock. “Who’s the other man?”
“His friend.”
She didn’t ask any more questions. She sat quietly and watched as, fifty years before, Sherlock and John went about their everyday lives - arguing in the sitting room, laughing in the landing, drinking tea into the small hours. She drank it all in until the video cut out, leaving only a black screen behind.
Becky went downstairs to put the kettle on, leaving him wondering why he’d shown her footage that he’d never shown to anyone else. Even John had not seen it. John, who, after it had happened, had asked for photographs and smiled when Mycroft found one of Sherlock, in his twenties, staring angrily into the lens. In any case, John was now dead. Lestrade was dead too; a sudden heart attack two decades ago.
Had he shown her the film because he’d left it too late, because no one else remained to see it? Years ago, he would have known why he’d done it; he, more than Sherlock even, made a career of knowing why. Now, he saw everything through a twilit haze, as if his life was lingering at an asymptotic dusk. The only thing now was to wait for a sunset that seemed to be perpetually deferred.
25
Sherlock is three, smart, and a little spoiled. He’s picky with his food, he’s not scared of the dark anymore and now has his own room. When his brother is with him, Sherlock is Mycroft's shadow.
Now Sherlock is scared and crying, because he doesn't like hospitals; he knows that people, good people like his Nana, go there and don't come back. He knows what the words “she's in heaven” really mean that he's never going to see her again. Mycroft explained it to him, and now it's him in the hospital. If Mycroft doesn't come out Sherlock will never forgive him.
Mycroft is in his hospital bed when their mother takes Sherlock to visit his older brother. Mycroft doesn’t look sick like their Nana, he's not mad at Sherlock. He starts crying again.
"I don't want to murder you." Sherlock sobs, and his mother kneels down to wipe his little face with her handkerchief. Sherlock likes it because it smells like her. She lets him keep it.
"You didn't kill me, Sherlock." Mycroft is almost thirteen, and so much taller than Sherlock. He's kind and protects him and shows him interesting things. Sherlock really likes his brother.
Mummy helps Sherlock sit on the bed beside his brother's stretched legs. One of them has a bandage on it, and Sherlock looks at it guiltily. He knows what’s under the bandage, too.
"Do you want to see the stitches?" Mycroft asks, and his mother shoots him warning look, but it’s a harmless thing, and she relents.
Sherlock nods, he's always been curious and this is the first time he's had the chance to see a stitched wound. Mycroft pulls back the bandage and shows him. His mother inspects it too, and is pleased at how it's healing. "Does it hurt?" Sherlock inquires, little fingers stopping short of touching the abused skin.
"Very little," Mycroft replies, then he ruffles his brother's hair and their mother smiles approvingly.
"Would you like a hot chocolate, boys?" she asks. The cafeteria is not very far and she knows she can leave them alone for a little while. She’ll have the nurse keep an eye on them from the door. The answer is yes and after giving a kiss on the forehead to each child she leaves the room.
"I'm sorry I hurt you," Sherlock says, voice trembling a bit under the pressure of more incoming tears.
"I know you didn't mean to," Mycroft replies with a ready smile, "at least I'm going to have something to remind me of you when I go to boarding school."
Sherlock knows that the new boarding school is far away, and that he won’t see Mycroft as often as he wants, but he says nothing. He hugs his older brother and vows to be strong and not cry when he misses him.
More than three decades later, only few people are aware of that tiny scar on Mycroft's thigh; fewer still have asked how he got it, and Mycroft never told anyone.
He barely remembers it’s there unless he catches the short ridge of the scar in the mirror or under his fingers, and then he remember about it. He sees the terrified expression on Sherlock’s face as he notices that the knife he was playing with was sticking out of his brother’s thigh, the tears running down his little cheeks, the burn of the wound and the strange sense of detachment due to the shock.
He clearly remembers worrying that his mother would be upset about the blood staining his trousers.
Lestrade never asks about it, even if sometimes he strokes it when they’re in bed and he’s lost in thoughts. He acknowledges it without asking questions, knowing that a physical scar often is linked to an emotional one. He doesn’t press the issue because when Mycroft is reminded about it he doesn’t look haunted. He smiles sadly to his memories and moves on.
Mycroft makes coffee for the two of them and takes it to bed. “Greg,” he starts, giving himself time to turn back and change the subject if his courage fails. “I want to tell you an old story.”
Lestrade makes himself comfortable against the pillows and holds him close to his chest. His heart is beating steadily and it’s soothing. “Sure.”
“It’s the story of how I got the scar.”
26
"Stay close."
Mycroft received the mild reminder with disinterest. It was rhetorical: he has no intention of wandering off, seeing as he carried no currency of his own. He was only eleven. What purpose would it serve if he strayed?
Nevertheless, he caught eyes flitting towards him on occasion to verify he was indeed obeying. Mycroft stepped closer to his mother, the shopping crinkling noisily between her dress and his arm.
"Stay close," his mother murmured again when someone knocked into her, sending her a half-step closer.
"Yes, Mum," Mycroft dutifully replied. He resisted taking a step back to preserve his toes from her heels. Mycroft bit back a sigh; he didn't understand why he had to accompany her to the plaza on a Saturday. Between the bland upper Third set readings and his tutor’s unimaginative dedication to rote maths worksheets and lengthy Latin translations (never mind that Mycroft had demonstrated his mastery of the second declension weeks ago), he had precious little time to pursue his own curricula. And just when he’d gotten to a most instructive passage of The Prince.
Mummy nodded distractedly as she examined a hat Mycroft hoped was for the little baby in the pram, rocked by the nanny sitting on the edge of the stone fountain. He spared a glance towards the newest Holmes with a wrinkle of his nose. The adults did not seem to mind having a baby, even though it meant foul smells, endless clutter and ludicrously excessive compliments and praise, as if the baby was borne not of biology, but shaped by something more impressive. The newborn itself, at least, was surprisingly quiet.
Another murmur from Mummy alerted Mycroft he had not followed as diligently as he should. She was already by the next rack, inspecting the quality of the stitching on a suit jacket far too formal to be practical, pointless for one who thus far had demonstrated few talents apart from the ability to sick up on itself.
Mycroft took the obligatory shuffle towards Mummy, his eyes on the fountain. Mrs. Carter was chatting with a man in a suit a bit too short in the arms, too long on the legs. He stood there, map folded to a section, finger pointed specifically at a spot as if he already knew it was there, yet he asked for directions, head canted away from the nanny as if he was truly puzzled. The nanny, nodding, smiling, uncurled her hand around the pram's handle and turned to point towards a street clearly marked in the distance-
"Mycroft!"
Later, in the police station, Mycroft would explain why he dashed across the street and swung all of Mummy's shopping at the knees of a man bent to reach his arms into the pram. Later, after the nanny stopped sobbing "Oh my God. I didn't see him. I didn't see him!", Mycroft would describe the other man, the one who kicked him, knocking him into the pram and turning the carriage, the baby, and Mycroft into the cobblestone street before taking off with his conspirator.
Later.
For now, Mycroft cradled the baby, an icepack on his throbbing knee, and watched the adults bicker and cast blame. Sherlock, who hadn't cried the entire time, blinked up at him with dark, bottomless eyes, like Mycroft was a curious object orbiting his crib. Tiny fingers wriggled up out of the blankets, reaching and grabbing his chin, finding it disinteresting then letting go. The nanny, perhaps compensating for her lack of vigilance, had swaddled his brother tightly, pinning the baby's legs. But contrary to what one might expect, Mycroft's brother merely screwed up his face and squirmed as the world around him wailed and yelled and shouted and threatened helpless babies, easily snatched by strangers. And for the first time since Sherlock was brought home all pink and tiny, Mycroft understood what his mother meant.
"Stay close," Mycroft murmured as he tightened his arms.
The End
27
She wasn't raised to believe in abortions. She has nothing against them, and she's considered it many times, considering her age. But when it comes down to it, she's never had a child, and even knowing that she won't keep this one, she cannot help but know that she would do everything to protect it.
She makes the stipulations that she must know the parents. She must have photos. She has no right to make such demands, but she is fortunate to find people who promise to do those very things for her.
She briefly considers keeping the baby, but then she remembers her husband. She remembers the kind of man she has married.
She tells him she's going away to have an abortion and to make sure this never happens again. She gets him to sign papers for the adoption without him knowing. It's the one thing she has slipped by him.
So she travels before she starts to show. It's the first time in years she's been alone. It's like a mini-holiday, except none of her clothes fit and she's constantly ill. The doctor checks, and everything is fine though.
The birth itself is nothing she wishes to remember, and everything she hopes she doesn't forget. He's a small quiet child, and she names him James, after her grandfather.
She gets him for a whole week. She talks to him mostly, trying to tell him everything she wants to say for a lifetime.
She doesn't cry when his parents pick him up. Neither does he.
"Be brave," she whispers. "Be good."
They send pictures, and brief letters. She hides them behind the flour, because the kitchen is the one place she knows her husband will not go.
He turns into a bright child. Smart, for his age. Advanced, they say.
She almost cries in joy, but she holds back, for fear that her husband will see.
She knows most people would have divorced by now, walked out of the door. But she made a promise before God, and looking into her son's eyes, she remembers every reason she married him in the first place. She takes care of other children, taking in boarders for money. She mothers them as much as she can, hoping one day she can mother her own son.
The first time he finds her, he is sixteen. Brooding and moody and perfect. She turns him away at the door.
"You can't be here," she says, and closes the door before she pulls him in and never lets him go.
It's like that for many years, brief encounters that frighten and delight her. He grows tall and thin, her James, silent and strange.
When her husband is finally caught in a misdeed, they have tea.
He asks her why, and she tells him. He nods and thanks her, saying that his parents were good to him. Gave him the finest education possible.
"What's going to happen to my father?"
"I don't know," she says. "And I don't care."
"I see," he says, and no more.
He shakes her hand and kisses her cheek before leaving.
There's a bit of sadness and regret, because she loves him, but only in that way you love a distant relative. The phone rings.
"This is she," she says. "I'm sorry, you what? You have evidence that could convict my husband? Who is this? You're at the door?"
She opens the door, and it's another tall, brooding young man. She's not sure if her heart can take it.
"Mrs. Hudson?"
"Yes?"
The man holds out his hand. "Sherlock Holmes. I was just on the phone with you."
"Oh."
Later, she'll realize she still sees James on the corner, watching her intently. Later she'll understand why this Moriarty is so focused on Sherlock. She doesn't blame him.
But in the moment, he's just another boy, just another lost soul.
28
Sally knelt on the cold bathroom floor, fingers splayed in the sticky blood and chest heaving. She wanted to be ill, but she knew (some tiny voice in the back of her mind, some loud whisper in her ear) that would contaminate the scene, make it harder for the coppers. Instead, she struggled to her feet, pushed herself to the door and out into the corridor. The phone seemed miles away. Downstairs, the tv blared some chat show and it made her teeth ache, made her clench her jaw so tightly to hold in her sobs, her screams. She sat down at the end of the corridor, phone in her lap, and waited, staring at the bathroom door, waiting for her mother to step out of the bathroom, waiting for her to say everything was fine and not to be so silly, wouldn’t she rather have some ice cream? The chat show turned into a soap opera and Sally closed her eyes. She had to call. Her mother wasn’t coming out.
The red blanket was the worst, she decided. It reminded her of the blood, the sticky and drying blood all over the bathroom floor. An ambulance idled at the kerb, the paramedics in no great rush. The police were milling about the tiny yard as well and Sally wanted to scream. There was a rattle, a thump, a muffled curse and she leaned around the policewoman in front of her to see what was happening.
“Hey.” A tall, dark haired man with greying temples stepped into her line of sight, nudging the policewoman away. “My name is Sargent Lestrade but you can call me Greg, if you’d like. You’re Sally?”
“Yeah,” she sniffed, her voice thick and fractured. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” She already knew the answer.
“Tell me what happened, Sally.” Greg crouched down to look her in the eyes and while he did not smile, he offered her a kind expression, a handful of tissues.
“I come home from school, right? Come home and the door was open so I figured she was mopping with the ammonia. She opens up the house when she does that. But there weren’t a smell, was there? I went looking for her an’ found her in the loo. She...someone...” She felt herself crumble from the inside out, her body convulsing over her hands, pressing into her navel, feeling the invisible cord that was once a conduit, severed forever now. It ached, that spot behind her navel, that spot where her mother pulsed once upon a time. “Who,” she sobbed, broken and sharp, “did this?”
“Listen to me, Sally,” the sergeant was saying, voice close to her ear, tissues pressed against her cheeks. “This is terrible, worse than terrible, but you need to tell me everything that you noticed. Tell me about your entire day, starting with when you woke up this morning and don’t stop until you get to now, to where I came up and introduced myself, alright?”
She nodded slowly, closed her eyes, and began. She felt a bit ridiculous, snotty and sobbing and crying, body shaking, telling this man about how Rich McAllister dumped her in front of the entire sixth form, how her mum had given her money to buy milk on the way home but she’d spent it on lip gloss to make Rich’s new girl jealous of how pretty she was, how she thought that maybe she could go to Sainsbury’s and get the milk and her mum would be alive when she got back... It all came spilling out and when she was done, her breath hitched on a sob. “Sergeant, will that help you catch who done this to my mum?”
He did smile then, a thin and brittle expression. “I think it might, Sally. You’re very observant.” He handed her the blanket that she did not know she had dropped and rose to his feet, waving over another officer and rattling something off, something Sally barely caught about checking the pawn shops for the missing jewelry, about a copycat. She barely heard any of it because the ambulance was pulling away, her mother inside. Lestrade was back at her side, telling her that she would need to make a formal statement soon.
“Does it feel good? Catching people who do these things?”
He stared, startled, before answering. “Yes. Very much.”
Sally nodded. “Right. Take me to the station, then.”
29
Warnings: multiple main character deaths & mentions of suicide
I am tired, so very tired. My bones seem to ache with weariness.
I have been doing this for so long now - spinning my webs, guiding people, masterminding entire governments - that I barely remember anything else.
I entered the service young and foolish, secure in the knowledge that I was going to make the world a better place, help people, make a difference. I was such a child.
Years passed. Essentially nothing had changed, except perhaps a little of my naivety had rubbed off. I began to think my role was to maintain the status quo, to prevent things from getting any worse. I didn’t understand, even then.
Famines, floods and four seemingly never-ending wars later and I realised that the most I could aim for was to stop the entire world from descending into hell. As I sit reading my latest briefings on current affairs, I’m not convinced I have achieved my aim.
When I signed up I knew that what I had agreed to do would make me a target. I knew it would make those close to me targets too. I thought I was invincible and oh so clever. I thought I could build such complex shields, such intricate barriers around my loved ones that no one could ever get through. Protect them as I protected myself.
First they took Anthea. All the warning signs were there but I failed to see them until too late. I rang her, trying to stop what was by then inevitable. She answered, “Hello My-“ and then the phone went dead. A ‘gas explosion’ was reported that evening on the news. Her body was identified by her dental records.
I still do not know whether they took Mummy. A morphine overdose in a terminally ill cancer patient led to the coroner pronouncing ‘suicide’. Had she decided the pain was too much, decided she couldn’t bear living any more, couldn’t even bear one more day to say goodbye to her sons? Or was it their hand on the button, flooding her veins with the drug, tearing her away from us. I do not know, and I was too cowardly to try to find out. It’s too late now.
Then they took John. They had broken his body and very nearly destroyed his spirit before I could find them and rescue him. I lost both him and Sherlock because of it. They fled Baker Street. Went into hiding. Hiding from me. I haven’t tried to find them. They don’t deserve the heartache and misery that follows me around.
I carried on with my work. Alone. Like a spider brooding in the dark I still wove my intricate webs. Charming, persuading, manipulating, more from habit than any real sense of purpose. Perhaps I have made a difference. Perhaps a few lives are better than they would have been. Perhaps some conflicts that would have been never came to fruition because of my labours. I will never know.
Tonight they are coming for me.
I find I welcome them.
30
John is not long out of school, and only recently deployed on active duty, the first time he truly shoots with the intent to kill.
It's not the first time he's used a gun, of course. Far from it, in fact, as he's been trained for that very act since he first began to show an aptitude for marksmanship, but every squeeze of the trigger prior to the crystalline moment when he fires the shot he knows will end a man's life was just build-up. It feels like the culmination of something, something both simple and grand, like he's finally released a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
He swears to himself, as he lowers the gun and looks down at his calm, steady hands, that he will never tell anyone how good it felt.
Both John and his superiors find, as he begins to rise through the ranks, that his skill with a firearm makes him almost horrifically over-qualified to be just a run-of-the-mill field medic. This, he knows, is why he's shipped out to high-risk areas, places with a lot of violence, where army doctors need to know how to do more than just return fire while tending the wounded. He's happy to take these assignments, the ones other soldiers dread and that earn him angry emails from Harry, demanding to know why he's so careless with his life (and doesn't he know what it would do to their mum if he got killed out there?), for reasons he finds impossible to articulate. No one back home, he's sure, will ever be able to understand that he needs the danger and thrives on being that particular variety of useful.
It's hard to forget you're alive when you spend your days doing even the most mundane things to the sound of distant gunfire, and the threat that it could move in closer at any time.
But he keeps his promise to himself. As he moves from one post to another, trying to avoid long returns to England and the inevitable haze that settles over him there, the violence he finds disconcertingly easy is always only a moment away. But he never breathes a word of how it feels to be the one to pull the trigger. That, too, is something his friends and family back home will never, ever understand.
It's not that he's a psychopath, or serial killer waiting to happen, though. He feels absolutely no compunction to open fire on London commuters, or strangers he passes on the sidewalk, or people milling around in shops. But on the battlefield, in the middle of an invasion, or a war? That's something else entirely and he finds that he loves it as he stands still and steady and brimming with so much life he's amazed it doesn't spill out of him, bright and sharp as shrapnel.
He doesn't know it yet, as he squints in the sun and keeps his gun close at hand, but the day will come when he won't be quick enough to fire first. When he'll be trying too hard to save a man's life to take cover or lift his own gun. On that day, which he has not imagined because no one ever really believes it'll happen to them, no matter how many times they see it happen to others, he'll be given a back-handed blessing in the form of a ruined shoulder, a limp that shouldn't be real, and the one man in all the world who will not only believe him when he haltingly explains his attachment to the battlefield, but who will understand.
He has no way of knowing this, no hint of prescience to foretell something so many years away, but it will be the single greatest gift he ever receives.
Entries 31-38 and Poll