This fic is a collab between LastSaskatchewanSpacePirate and me. The odd numbered chapters are hers, and the even numbered ones are mine. Please read and review, and give her some love for these! :)
Unfortunately, we do not own these characters. Those rights go to Sir ACD and BBC.
Note: There are 43, 800 minutes in a month.
Donovan's been quiet ever since it happened. Is that guilt? Lestrade doesn't know, and Lestrade doesn't care.
Sherlock Holmes has been dead for one month.
What Donovan shouldbe doing is bragging and gloating. But she's not. They avoid each other and it becomes routine, so that when he sees her down the end of the corridor talking to Anderson it's the first time he's seen her in weeks. He plans to walk straight past, but as he comes near enough to hear their conversation he stops dead.
They're talking about Sherlock.
"I always knew he was a freak." Anderson is saying, and that's all Lestrade hears of the conversation but that's enough because he drops what he's holding and storms toward the pair of them, hands out, blood boiling, intending with all his heart to rip Anderson's throat out with bare hands and fingernails -
That's when Dimmock sees him headed toward Anderson with murder in his heart and seizes him round the middle. "No-!"
Anderson and Donovan turn to stare as Lestrade spins round and punches Dimmock full in the face. The younger DI stumbles back a bit, surprised, his nose streaming blood. What Lestrade should be doing is running. Right now. Out of the hallway, out of the building. But instead he throws himself at Dimmock and hits him again, and then again, with all his force, feeling Dimmock's nose break under his fist, once, twice, three, four times until his knuckles are sore and his whole hand is wet with blood. The blood is streaked up his arm, and on his shirt, and his face and it feels good. Dimmock scrambles out from under his fist, backing away, blood gushing down his face. The whole front of his shirt is wet. He spits a mouthful of blood onto the floor.
Donovan and Anderson are dead silent.
What Dimmock should be doing is fighting him. The Iain Dimmock he knew would have broken his nose right back. He would have been swearing a blue streak and beating Lestrade bloody. Lestrade waits for it. Wants it. But Dimmock just looks at him.
He wonders what happened to the Dimmock he knew.
He wonders what happened to the Lestrade he knew.
Donovan should be swearing too. Yelling at him, making all kinds of threats, telling him he was stupid and an idiot and get out of the damn building and don't get back until you can control yourself. Except that she doesn't. Not at all. It seems what people shouldbe doing doesn't matter much anymore.
Lestrade shouldhave been keeping Sherlock safe.
He figures he can at least count on Anderson. Anderson will overreact in some way. He'll scream or swear or go running off to tattle to a superior or at least launch into a monologue about how batshit crazy Lestrade is and how stupid they all are, they were, to count on Sherlock for anything, and how Lestrade should have seen this coming. Lestrade waits for that. It's nice to have something solid in all this, even if it's Anderson.
Except that Anderson doesn't say anything.
No one says anything.
The silence is so thick you can almost hear Dimmock's blood dripping on the carpeting.
So Lestrade does what he should have done in the first place.
He runs.