A Case of the Heart
(Companion to A Worthwhile Experiment)
It was the silence that let Irene know something was amiss. Even when Lily took the children out, there was some sound—Pan's claws clicking on the floor as he came to meet her, the breeze through an open window, the hum of the bread machine Lily bought second-hand and used at least bi-weekly. The front hall was stuffy and warm—odd because Lily usually opened the windows on pretty days, despite Sherlock's complaints that the breezes messed up his papers. The rug showed fresh vacuum tracks, little shoes were lined up next to the radiator in two sizes along with a pair of Lily's well-worn Wellington boots.
A shiver ran up her spine and though Irene tried to shake it off, she couldn't dismiss the feeling that something was not quite right. She whistled with false cheer, calling the dog's name through the house.
"Pan? Come here boy."
There wasn't even the rustle of the dog scooting off the couch which he was decidedly not allowed to be on, a usual sound when anyone arrived home early.
You're being silly, Irene told herself, but she pulled her mobile from her pocket and dialed Lily's number anyway. She and Sherlock had taken a weekend trip for him to solve a case and her to get out of London for a few days. It wasn't uncommon and Lily had shrugged off the fact that her day off was being moved to mid-week, encouraging the couple to go.
The phone rang several times before a tiny electronic voice informed her that the phone was out of service.
Breathe, she reminded herself. Probably a misdial. I'll try again.
She selected Lily's number from her contacts and hit 'send' before holding it to her ear once more, waiting as it rang, rang, and the electronic voice informed her once more that the phone was out of service.
Pocketing the mobile, she swallowed carefully and walked through the pristine house to the kitchen. Everything was spotless, shining, and cleaner than Irene had seen it since the two children had taken a weekend with John and Mary. Something was amiss, she could feel it in the pit of her stomach. It was too perfect, too clean. But there—the kitchen table, a sheet of white paper. Nearly collapsing with relief, Irene rushed over to the paper—most certainly a note from the nanny explaining where she and the children were. Perhaps a day trip to Cardiff or the sea, some picnic lunch in a historic garden or a romp around a park? Yes, certainly that was where they were.
Against the clean white paper was black text, standard font. Instead of the hand-written explanation she had hoped for, Irene only read four words in Lily's precise penmanship.
You don't deserve them.
-Before-
"You could at least pretend to care about your son," Irene remarked sharply as Sherlock slowly inhaled cigarette smoke and blew it into the London fog.
"You wouldn't believe a word I said regardless, so why should I?"
"Human decency."
"Your sentiment is showing and it's a dreadful look on you."
Pulling her mask on would be losing, so she didn't. Instead she sneered at him,
"At least I'm capable of wearing it."
"Willing and capable are two very different things."
"Your sexual abilities have certainly proven that."
His response was cut off by the swirl of her coat as she called over her shoulder,
"You're visiting him this week or I'll have to resort to less subtle methods than running into you on a street corner."
He was going to tell her that she didn't know the meaning of the word subtle but she was gone and there he was on a London street corner smoking a cigarette so Mrs. Hudson wouldn't badger him and John wouldn't turn up to scold him for smoking or for not mentioning his son. She was gone in the fog and there was not a word he could say about it, but there in his chest, that damned sentiment which he again forced down. Every time he saw her, every time he went to see their son it got harder to push down the feeling of if not sentiment, at least mild affection, a lesser version of what he felt for Mrs. Hudson or John.
In his mind palace he had turned the problem over and over, debating what he could delete, what he could bury, what he could keep in his memory. Very little was delete-able and it seemed that whenever he tried to remove the more...delicate...memories of Ms. Adler, there she was with her crop in her battle dress and emerging from his mind palace was embarrassing due to facts he cared not go into.
He came to see Toby after hours of studying his cries, though not because Ms. Adler had told him to. He refused food and accepted tea and when he was finally comfortable in the sitting room, his son on his chest, skin-to-skin, in came Irene with her smirk and innuendo. Then as Toby cried and the nanny cradled him and carried him away they were sniping at each other with cold intellect and razor-words. Nanny, unimportant. Food, unimportant. Tea, unimportant. His son, Tobias. Important. Irene Adler. The Woman. Important.
Sharp words, whirling gears in his mind, the game the game the GAME they played it was everything.
"Serotonin, oxytocin, progesterone."
"Spouting chemical names isn't helping your case. You're losing."
"Those chemicals are instrumental in child brain development."
"Which you wouldn't know unless you'd researched it."
"It's incredibly relevant to criminal cases. Parental bonds, bonds between partners, the simple act of touch can persuade someone you are friend or foe. It is relevant."
"You couldn't convince someone you were a friend if you tried."
"I have convinced several, I'll have you know."
"Convince me then, Mr. Holmes."
"You already have negative bias and furthermore you don't want to be convinced."
"That sounds very much like an excuse."
"Sit down," he ordered.
Raising an eyebrow, she sank onto the couch and waited, kicking off her heels with a self-satisfied smirk. I've beaten you, her eyes seemed to say.
He sat next to her and drew one of her bare feet into his lap, studied it, and began to knead the muscles along the arch of her foot, the tendons along the sides and up through the middle. Irene bit back a sigh of relief and instead left her eyebrow raised as she stared him down.
"You think that a foot massage is going to convince me you're a friend?"
"Your tone of voice has dropped significantly, your heart rate has decreased, and the muscles in your shoulders, neck, and face are more relaxed than they were before I began this exercise."
"I'm sitting. Of course I'm more relaxed and have a slower heartbeat."
Sherlock pressed his thumb into the arch of her foot and kneaded circles up to the ball of her foot.
"I'm a dominatrix, Sherlock. You can't use my body as a weapon against me. That's my job."
"Perhaps I can't seduce you, but I know the human body's muscles, tendons, nerve endings. I can make your body associate this touch with relaxation, and make that connection to a non-threatening person."
"You think you're cleverer than you are."
He worked the muscles of her foot for a long while as the silence dragged on before switching to her other foot. When they were both done, she leaned off the side of the sofa and lifted his leg into her lap.
"If you're going to manipulate my nervous system, I'm returning the favor. No cheating, Sherlock."
They were quiet a long while before the silence became comfortable, before he realized that he had no idea how to handle the fact that he would have to see her frequently for at least the next eighteen years of his child's life. He could barely access her room in his mind palace without his body betraying him, how was he supposed to deal with frequent in-person interaction.
Little did he know, she was thinking something very similar.
-After-
Her fingers shook and though she set the paper back where she had found it and backed out of the house, careful not to touch anything, panic rose in her chest. Pulling on her armor, she forced the shaking to stop, dialed Sherlock's number, waited for him to answer.
Voicemail.
Voicemail.
Voicemail.
"What." He sounded irritated. "I'm in the middle of a very delicate experiment."
"They're gone."
"What?"
"Toby, Sophia, Lily, Pan. There was a note. They're not here."
"Well I'm sure they'll be back soon, so if you'll excuse me."
"William Sherlock Scott Holmes, I need you here now." Ice was warmer than her voice and steel was softer. He did not reply, merely hung up the phone. Less than ten minutes later when he arrived on the curb, clothing mussed as though he had dressed in a hurry, he was all business.
"Did you move anything?"
"The note. I tried to put it back where it was."
He swept past her and into the house, and though she followed, it seemed he no longer saw her. He saw the carpet (vacuum tracks, not walked on except for the Woman), the thermostat on the wall (two degrees warmer than usual and turned off), the banister for the stairs (polished, still smelled of furniture oil). He moved through the hall (pictures straight, dusted recently), and into the kitchen (floor mopped, sink clean, dishwasher empty, table clean except for the note—moved before Irene had touched it, likely by whoever cleaned the house).
"Three," he told her. "That was cleverer than I would have given her credit for."
"She can't have done this," Irene said, voice calmer than she felt. "She's cared for them both since they were born. She only ever complained when you drugged her and Pan for an experiment and when we disappear unexpectedly."
"She never complains, has only asked for a raise once, works around our schedule, and made our rooftop into a—" he stopped mid-sentence and bolted from the kitchen, up the stairs, up up up to the rooftop garden Lily had so lovingly cultivated over the years where...nearly everything was missing. A few pots containing common plants and herbs sat in a corner but the sprawling Eden that Lily had constructed over her time working in the house was gone. There were pots here and there with dirt at the bottom, but apart from the common plants and anything growing on a trellis, there was no evidence of the garden home Lily had created for herself.
"Last time you were up here?"
"It's been a while."
"She's been working on this for weeks. It would have taken at least that long to move and ensure that all the plants were transported well. If she took the time to move them, she took the time to make sure they survived the trip."
"Facts."
"It's what I work with."
"No deductions?"
"I need time, Irene." His voice cracked like a whip and it stung like one as well. She didn't flinch, though anyone else would have.
"Time is a luxury we don't have. If they leave the country, they could disappear."
"Why do you think I need time? If I make an incorrect deduction, if I'm off by even a few minutes on the flight time or the airport terminal, we might never find them."
"You found me."
"I knew you were going to disappear."
"And you didn't see this coming?"
"Would you just shut up for a minute? Please, I'm trying to bloody think!"
She fell silent and he scanned the rooftop before going downstairs to Lily's room, where he took in every spare detail, opened her computer and checked her history (deleted) and in her wastebasket (emptied). He scanned for rogue fibers, anything out of place, a smell even. He tore through Toby's room, then the nursery, picking up any detail he could scrounge from the thrice-cleaned house. After he stalked out of the nursery and into the hall, he met Irene's gaze with cold blue eyes.
"She went to Heathrow."
"What flight?"
"She's flying to America."
"When?"
"Morning flight. Yesterday, if the clothes she packed for the children are any indication."
"So what now?"
"Mycroft."
So, any thoughts? This is the big opener. I've rewritten parts of it over and over and it's still not as perfect as I want but I figured I'd keep moving on and work on making the next chapter better.