Chapter One, Part 1: The Dead Can Be Dull, Sometimes
"What about that one over there?" Ophelia queries from her perch on the tall stool, swinging her long legs back and forth and twirling her hair around her finger like the bored twelve year old that she is. Leaning back to rest her elbows on the worktop, she points with her chin to indicate the body still in its black bag on the other side of the morgue.
Sherlock frowns at the interruption and stands up slowly, grunting when his spine pops loudly in protest from where he's been leaning over the corpse for the past half hour. He glances towards the second stainless steel table and opens his mouth as if to answer her with the usual long, dense string of facts.
"She's told me nothing," he grudgingly mutters instead. The complete absence of any telling data at all is difficult enough to explain without adding her smug pronouncement from earlier to the mix. He flat out refuses to tell her she's right.
Ophelia narrows her blue eyes at the unspoken words left hanging in midair then purses her lips and blows a rebellious auburn ringlet off her forehead. "What about her?"
Sherlock huffs almost quietly as he turns back to the blonde-haired young woman on the slab in front of him. Rather than admit he's getting absolutely nothing from the corpse, he pretends to be interested in a mole on the side of the dead woman's jaw. He closes his eyes and tries to let his mind relax, stubbornly seeking the threads of communication he already knows do not exist. Disregarding Ophelia's questioning expression, he strides purposely over to the second body, unzips the bag, gazes down at the girl for ten seconds and just as quickly zips it right back up.
"Sherlock? I really need to get these ladies comfortable for the night. If you're finished, that is?" Doctor Hooper calls out from the doorway of her office. Her face is turned away from him where she's watching a program on her computer run through a complicated string of equations in order to check the parameters of a test he personally designed to check for organic markers in frozen red blood cells.
"Yes, Molly, I've seen all there is to see."
"Good, then, what do you think…" Molly begins, but Sherlock has already swept out of the room, coattails swishing as he passes through the double doors.
Molly rolls her eyes and takes her hands out of her lab coat pockets then steps into the workspace to begin the nightly ritual of cleaning up. The tall stool set off to the side of the room gives her pause. She decides that with Sherlock there's always some explanation for whatever he deems necessary when investigating a crime as she slides it back into its place. Maybe tomorrow she'll ask him about it if there's time. For tonight, it's late and she really needs to get home and feed Toby.
ooo
Sherlock does not enjoy driving. In all honesty, he prefers to take a cab to get around, but the almost hour long distance from his house to the morgue tends to get expensive very quickly. He's been running a bit low on funds the past couple of weeks, though with the case he finished prior to today's waste of time, he'll have an income again.
As he negotiates the roads which are practically empty at this late hour going out of the city, Sherlock watches Ophelia fidget in the passenger seat. She keeps switching from gnawing on her already short fingernails to picking at the hems of her denim shorts. She's wearing her favorite blue and white striped blouse and for a moment he finds himself wondering if he should get her a light jacket for the unpredictable British spring weather.
"Sherlock, you worry too much. You're starting to act like Mycroft. I'm fine."
For a second their eyes meet and Ophelia smiles. After grinning back, Sherlock returns his attention on the road, fighting himself against counting the lines on the pavement as the car passes over them. After the usual amount of time, he turns into the long driveway leading up to what was once a beautifully appointed country home but is now beginning to look its age, as it is desperate need of a fresh coat of paint or twenty and more than a little bit of fixing up. The light nearest the front door is broken, its bulb hanging by a single wire and swaying in the scant night breeze.
Sherlock ignores it all, however, moving up the stone walkway to the front door in several long strides after slamming the car door shut.
"Sherlock," Ophelia calls out from where she's quickly gaining on him. Her hair has gone wispy, long tendrils framing her face and sticking out from the rubber band holding her ponytail. She steps through the door as he starts to close it.
As if on cue, the sound of a dog yipping and howling from somewhere deep in the huge house starts up only to stop abruptly. Sherlock rolls his eyes, hangs his coat on the hook on the back of the door then looks to Ophelia, who is blocking the walkway through the room and watching him with her hands on her hips.
"Don't do that, you look just like Mummy," he states blandly.
"Ha! You wish. Are you eating tonight?" Ophelia counters.
Sherlock actually considers it for a moment. "No, I don't think so."
"What are you going…" Ophelia tries.
Sherlock cuts her off before she can get a head of steam going. "Enough, Ophelia. Please, just. Just leave me alone for a while." He looks towards the staircase and a perfect picture of his favorite solution to all of life's problems flashes through his mind.
"You don't have to do that, you know. You could…" Ophelia looks around the decrepit sitting room. "Oh! I know," she says brightly. "You could stay down here and maybe we could play a game? Or you could just talk to me…" her eyes glisten wetly in the dim nightlight from the kitchen.
"Ophelia," Sherlock snorts, stopping his ascent up the staircase with his hand on the bannister. "How can I talk to you when you already know everything?"
"I can listen," she says quietly, stepping closer to him, her bare feet making no sound on the dusty antique Persian carpet.
Sherlock smacks the wood with his palm. "No, not now. I need to be alone. For the moment, I'm tired of the dead."
ooo
Sherlock doesn't leave his bedroom for three days after that. Part of his mind senses Ophelia flitting about the house, doing whatever it is that she does but mostly she seems aware of his desire and leaves him well enough alone.
In the early morning twilight of the third day, Sherlock cracks his eyes and groans against the cruel intrusion of the post dawn greyness that doesn't deserve to be called 'sunlight.' The cocaine helps blur the constant buzz of voices that forever linger on the edges of his consciousness. He pays for it, though, once the high is gone and every detail he's ever taken in remains as if branded on the walls of his Mind Palace. All the faces of the ones he could help plus the ones he couldn't save.
Sometimes they are too heavy a load to bear. He's not proud of the fact that he turns to illicit substances to help him over the rough patches, quite the opposite. Sherlock detests the choices that he made in his twenty nine years of life that led him to where he is now.
He'd always dreamt of doing something useful with his life, not staying here in this strange blend of limbo and living. On one hand, he knows that there are people who find him useful, the majority of them at New Scotland Yard, no doubt—but on the other hand, there's no one he's ever really connect with and it wouldn't be hard to end it. Just a little too much in the needle one night and he could slip beneath the velvet waves of unconsciousness…
"Sherlock." A tight voice says from the general direction of the armchair in the corner of his room.
"Mycroft, go away." Sherlock's own voice is raspy.
"You've upset Ophelia."
"Really, Mycroft? Now you're going to pretend she's here?" Sherlock opens his eyes all the way now, wincing in disgust at his well-groomed and perfectly dressed elder brother primly perched in the only other place left to sit in the room beside the bed.
Mycroft's expression mirrors his brother's for a moment. He flexes the fingers of the hand resting atop the large umbrella between his legs and decides that he's just going to wait this time. Sherlock has never been the most forthcoming about his emotions, and Mycroft has a pretty good idea what brought this newest binge of drug use on; still, he waits for the explanation.
Knowing he's never going to win this silent war, Sherlock huffs and rolls over onto his stomach. "I couldn't solve it," he bitches to his pillow.
Mycroft merely nods.
"That's it?" Sherlock spits venomously, though any edge to it is lost in the worn fabric covering the pillow now scrunched up within an inch of its life. Tiny pieces of feathers poke through at the edge of it.
"Get yourself cleaned up, Sherlock, I've a job for you." Mycroft gracefully stands, one hand smoothing down his waistcoat, the gold band on his finger glinting in the soft new sunlight peeking through the torn curtain over the only window in the room.
Sherlock counts Mycroft's footsteps and remains insolently on his stomach until he knows his brother has had time to leave the house. Rolling over, he thinks that maybe this time it wasn't worth it.
"Ophelia!" he bellows at the top of his lungs, which is a mistake because it sets his head to pounding. He grits his teeth against the pain, knowing full well there's no one else to blame for it but himself.
"Yes, you worthless, lazy, scuzbag of an excuse for a brother?"
"That's nice." Sherlock scoots himself upward in order to rest against the dark wooden headboard in order to accept the glass of water she sits down on the bedside table. After a few seconds of feeling Ophelia's angry gaze on him, he politely clears his throat. "I get the impression that I need to apologize."
"Indeed." Ophelia agrees, taking the seat Mycroft just vacated with an equal amount of grace.
It hurts to admit that he has no idea what he's apologizing for, so he simply blurts out a half-hearted "I'm sorry."
Ophelia nods. "Yeah, well, I don't believe you, but you should be."
Sherlock waits for her to continue. Ophelia waits for it to catch up with him. When it is obviously not going to, she hums a little under her breath.
"What?" he asks without looking at her. He's got something gross beneath his fingernails. It occurs to him then that he desperately needs to shower. "How long?" he finally bites out.
"Three days this time," she informs him.
Now he really does feel bad. "I didn't mean to leave you alone…"
"Yes you did," Ophelia snaps. "You always do."
Well, yeah, he did. But why should she get to say it first? "Come on, tell me what happened." He orders with The Smirk that usually works on her. But…
Not this time.
"No, Sherlock. I know it doesn't matter to you because you have oh so many people to talk to all the time, but you…you're all I have! How can you just go off and leave me like that? With nothing but your body lying here and I don't know if you're alive or dead!"
As if. "Does it really matter?" Sherlock asks, pitching his voice low.
"Don't talk like that." Ophelia says around the nail of her index finger.
"Out with it." After a heartbeat, he adds, "Please."
"Fine." She drops her hand to the arm of the chair and pulls her legs up beneath herself. "You woke up and asked me what I was doing here. I said I was keeping an eye on you and you…" she pauses to take what seems like a reassuring breath. Her blue eyes flick to his face then to the ceiling and back again. "You asked me if I had anywhere else to be."
"And you said no," he states, suddenly remembering the conversation.
Ophelia nods. "Right. I always say no. Only you didn't stop there…"
"I didn't." Sherlock knows it now. "I said there's at least one place you should be."
Again, she nods, eyes welling with tears. When she whispers into the now-heavy silence of a promising new morning suddenly gone cold, her voice trembles.
"My grave."