You've Got to Jump Off Cliffs
(And Build Your Wings On Your Way Down)
Detective Inspector Lestrade has often been reliably informed that he has 'a good eye'.
Usually, this is in reference to his good police work.
Lestrade sometimes wishes that people knew... His eyes are indeed special. But not, he thinks, in the way they think.
Ever since he was born, Gregory Lestrade could see wings.
Wings as in. Angel wings. As in.
His parents often tell him that he barely cried as a child. He was a very pleased infant, they said, easily amused, often squealing and reaching with fat little hands at invisible things on people's backs.
As a boy, he was caught staring more often at the scrawny geek with the pimples in his class's back row, than at Little Miss Popular.
It wasn't that he didn't like Gillian's wings, they were very pleasant wings a delicate shoulder-width size, but Colin had large feathers that never stayed still for very long.
And sometimes they'd nearly smack Lestrade in the face and threaten to get into his mouth.
As a young man Lestrade knew better than to talk about wings, or acknowledge their existence. He realized rather early on in life that nobody else saw the wings. Occasionally, he'd instinctively doge his way around a person's wings on the street and people would look at him oddly, but he learned to ignore that kind of attention.
Just because the wings weren't physically real, didn't mean they weren't there.
He figured out the logic behind the wings, one day. He realized why some people had larger wings than others.
That day, he had just turned eighteen years old, he was sitting on a street corner just watching people and their wings.
There was a sharp screech of car tires and Lestrade spun around just in time to see a woman grab a passing child's arm and yank her away from the street, just barely saving the child's life.
In front of his eyes, the woman grew a feather. A single, large, brilliantly glowing white feather.
In contrast other people, like the man who sometimes sold drugs near Lestrade's school, had only a few scruffy feathers. Unlike the woman's, the drug dealer's weren't in actuality wings at all. Just a few dirty feathers sticking out of his back like his duvet had torn a hole in which feathers escaped and he hadn't bothered brushing himself off.
Lestrade realized early on that people with those kinds of non-wings, were better avoided.
He learned to be very cautious around people like that. Friends of his called it 'street smarts'. A few years later, the drug dealer snapped and killed one of his buyers. Both parties involved were hopeless addicts, people said that it wasn't all that surprising.
The kid was only sixteen years old.
Soon after that, Lestrade applied for a job with the police.
When he met Sherlock Holmes the young man was a mess. He was malnourished, addicted to cocaine, homeless, and made everyone he met want to punch him.
And Lestrade really, really wanted to punch him for making a mess of his crime scene and verbally gutting his team.
But Sherlock had the saddest little wings.
They were small, waist-length little things and a little scuffed up. Lestrade just wanted to physically reach over, wash them out, and brush them down.
They were rather... neglected. But they were there.
Sherlock caught the then detective constable staring persistently at a particular point over his left shoulder and turned to look, but he saw nothing.
Lestrade eased Sherlock off the drugs, directed his massive intellect toward solving cases, indirectly helping people. And by the next year, Sherlock's wings were longer, reaching his calves now, stronger, by the way they reared and spread out behind him majestically like the wings of a powerful hawk as he prowled around in search of adventure.
Sure, they were still a little smudged here and there, and Lestrade would occasionally find a feather out of place, I mean, Sherlock was no saint and he still had problems with the whole 'being human' aspect of life. He also still had the annoying habit of making lifelong enemies after knowing them for only sixty seconds.
But he was getting there. Lestrade knew it by the way he would leave his flat sometimes and disappear for long periods of time before returning with brighter, livelier wings and proudly informing Lestrade of a new member of his 'Homeless Network' like a child bringing home a theoretical stray dog.
Lestrade was particularly proud of Sherlock's steadily growing wings.
Lestrade's first few contacts with Mycroft Holmes were either texts or phone calls and Lestrade determinedly did. Not. Like. Him.
At all.
Figures that when he did meet Mycroft, he found small still wings. Motionless, unreadable, and in a constant state of grey. They were even smaller than Sherlock's when Lestrade first met him. The tips just barely brushed Mycroft's shoulders, they were small enough not to be seen from the front.
They looked quite like grey cupid wings... God help him, but they were rather cute.
If Mycroft wondered why Lestrade bit back a small smile every time he turned his back, he didn't ask about it. Maybe it unnerved him, sometimes it made his tiny wings bristle.
It was a bit odd.
Lestrade liked Mrs. Hudson alot. She had wonderfully sized wings in a pretty shell pink colour. They weren't gigantic wings, nor were they terribly bright like some but they were warm, cozy. They were just large enough to fill half a room, creating a rather homey and relaxed atmosphere wherever she went, and in whomever she touched.
Lestrade sincerely enjoyed her company.
Molly Hooper had gentle beige wings with white spots. They were about the length of Lestrade's arm span and were glossy, neat and fluttered nonstop. It made Lestrade worried and nervous and made him think of tottering newborn fauns.
It made him feel rather protective of her.
Lestrade knew Sherlock wasn't alone in his new Baker Street flat when he saw the tip of a brilliant wing at the top of the stairs leading to Sherlock's flat.
The wing disappeared through the door and Lestrade walked into the flat... Only to be run over by a white-hot, seven-foot-winged wonder.
It took a moment of dumb staring for Lestrade to see past the huge presence filling the room to pinpoint the origin of the wings to be a rather stressed-looking blonde man with a cane sitting in one of Sherlock's armchairs.
This. Lestrade thought, gaping for a moment. This is the kind of man legends are born from.
John's wings literally pulsed with the man's passion for life and excitement. They were large and bright from the great good he had done, strong and warm, tested by the fires of pain and war. And though his wings drooped a bit from exhaustion and were frazzled from nightmares, they were bent but unbroken.
He was like a human archangel, Lestrade thought. He was very glad that he was Sherlock's new flatmate. His personal guardian angel.
He was also a little intimidated and rather jealous of the man's amazing wings.
Donovan's wings were a startling, electric blue like a police siren in a fog. They were decently sized but more sharp than fluffy like most wings. Lestrade supposed they represented her businesslike, sometimes curt personality.
She was a good cop and she loved helping people, she was always finding ways to get from point A - the crime, to point B - apprehending the criminal, in the quickest time possible. And she was genuinely good at what she did.
In many ways, she was quite similar to Sherlock. Perhaps that was why they never got along. She was a very intelligent, tough lady. Her wings suited her like they were tailor made for her shoulders.
Dimmock's wings were a glowing orange but they weren't very large. He was rather naive, Sherlock always said. He was the kind of man who, as a boy, believed he could save the world, and as a man, hadn't quite grown out of that belief.
He had the best intentions but difficult cases always depressed him. He was the kind of man who always believed in happy endings. His wings were warm like a candle that kept the hopes and determinations of every cop around him lit and alive.
Sometimes, Lestrade thought Dimmock and Donovan would make a damn good team.
Lestrade had only ever seen one picture Mycroft had of Sebastian Moran, but he's seen Moriarty many times during his trial.
The first striking thing about the criminal mastermind was that he had no wings at all.
No, on closer inspection, Moriarty had one feather clinging determinedly to his left shoulder blade. It was a grey feather, mottled with black spots and what seemed to be speckles of dried blood.
Which was coincidental because Lestrade had noticed the same single-feather motif on Moran's right shoulder. One ink-black feather with a smattering of frantic orange like fire tipped with scarlet.
Lestrade assumed that they had stopped their chaotic rampage, stooped only to save each other. The left and right halves of a whole. One as deranged and damaged as the other. They made a frighteningly matching pair.
Sometimes, Lestrade stands and stares at his reflection in mirrors when he's changing his clothes or showering. But he can't see his own wings. When he was younger, he wondered if he even had wings at all.
Sometimes he runs his hands over his shoulder blades but he can't feel them. Can't feel the warmth he feels around other people's wings, can't feel the juncture where wing would meet flesh.
He doesn't try to see his wings so much anymore. It depresses him every time he can't find them.
But everybody else knows. Even if they can't see it, they know.
They can feel it when Lestrade arrives at a crime scene and the terrorized victims and witnesses suddenly sigh in relief and relax, knowing they're safe.
They can see it when Lestrade makes small talk and tells them something nice and their smile positively glows.
They can sense it when he walks into a room and it ceases to be simply a room, but a place of companionship. And it's friendly, warm, people find it hard to dislike the Inspector.
Sherlock knows it whenever he spits out a rude remark that's not directed at the DI and Lestrade flinches anyway, for somebody else's sake.
John knows it every time Lestrade hides his worry for Sherlock with a wry exasperation and looks the other way when he commits a crime.
Mycroft knows it every time he sends his minions to look after Sherlock and to assist him only to find that Lestrade has beaten him there.
Mrs. Hudson and Molly know it by the way that Lestrade takes a few moments from the case to make small talk with them despite Sherlock's in-and-out flash deductions.
The Yarders know it every time Lestrade doesn't go home and ends up falling asleep in his office trying to solve a particularly gruesome case. Or every time they get fed up with Sherlock and Lestrade organizes a drugs bust to cheer them up.
Moriarty and Moran know it on some level every time they press the button on a detonator, or pull a trigger. They know the DI won't sleep peacefully that night.
They all know the one thing that Lestrade doesn't. He doesn't know what everybody else can see with a striking clarity that doesn't need the extra added drama of angel's wings.
They simply know.
Lestrade is a good man. This is a fact.
He is on the side of Angels, and better yet...
... He is one.
A/N: Brief character study. haha I believe in Lestrade!
And the title quote is:
If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down. -Ray Bradbury
I think it matches the cast of Sherlock rather well.