Title: Friends and Freaks
Authors: Kessie
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock, Sally, Mycroft, John, Lestrade, OCs
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, of course. It's Donovan.
Disclaimer: Sherlock belongs to the BBC, Moffat and Gatiss. No copyright infringement intended.
Summary: Sally and Sherlock are not what they seem. Or are they? Maybe they don't know themselves.
Thanks to Swissmarg for beta reading!
"Doctor Watson, Sergeant Sally Donovan. Old friend."
To say Sally was baffled when Sherlock introduced her to John Watson in that way would have been an understatement. Part of her wanted to scream at him for mocking her like that but she didn't dare do it at a crime scene.
So she did the only thing she could and brought him to her boss inthe room with the poor dead woman, grumbling all the while. Damn the freak.
Well, at least he might be useful in finding the killer. That was what counted, right?
She had not expected the day to become worse, but then she should have. It was easy to see that Sherlock was in a weird mood.
Sally would have liked to hit him then. He apparently had decided it was "Mock Sergeant Donovan day" again, and she hated him for that. He would do so every now and then. And always with glee, as if to rub it in.
"And is your wife away for long?" he inquired when he saw David. Sally couldn't do anything but watch the following exchange.
"Oh, don't pretend you worked that out. Somebody told you that." Of course David had to respond. This wasn't going to end well.
"Your deodorant told me that."
"My deodorant?"
"It's for men." Sally all but groaned, knowing what was coming. Damn, of course he had to pick up on that.
"Well, of course it's for men! I'm wearing it!" Maybe she should simply get David off the street and...
"So's Sergeant Donovan. Oh, and I think it just vaporised. May I go in?"
She hoped David would leave it at that and not make it worse. But of course he didn't. "Now look: whatever you're trying to imply ..."
"I'm not implying anything. I'm sure Sally came round for a nice little chat, and just happened to stay over. And I assume she scrubbed your floors, going by the state of her knees."
And off the freak was.
Old friend, my arse, she thought. Why did I ever care?
Beause they weren't friends. Never had been, right?
It was just a false assumption made by her a long time ago.
And yet she once had thought they were.
She had thought Sherlock was her friend. Someone who could be trusted. Someone who cared, even if it was hard to see sometimes.
She had been wrong. Oh so wrong.
#
The room in the basement of Bart's was cold, but that wasn't the reason Sally was shivering. Hell, she barely managed to stop breaking out in sobs again, as her eyes fell on the man on the slab once more. Dull, lifeless eyes stared at her as if accusing her of not being fast enough. Of not being able to catch the murderers before they got to him or the other two people who died with him in that bank that day.
And he was right. There had been hints. At least one friend of the robbers was said to have called the police in warning.
She... they should have been faster.
This shouldn't have happened.
Sherlock 'Freak' Holmes next to her, though, didn't seem to be affected at all. He was examining the body as if it were some kind of science project. All stoic and methodical. Not like it was someone he knew.
Not like it was Sally´s brother there on the slab. Not like this was Tim. Tim, who´d just laughed with him two days ago when they met as he was collecting Sally for Mum´s birthday dinner.
If Tim had known that Sherlock didn't actually care about him at all...
Sherlock was Sally´s friend, yes. But he and Tim had liked and respected each other.
Sally sniffed and barely managed to bite back a sob when Sherlock suddenly raised his head to look directly at her. "Caring is not an advantage, Sally!" he told her.
Arse.
#
Biting back the shiver which accompanied the memories, she decided to warn John later. He seemed like a nice bloke and didn't deserve to be hurt.
Because the freak didn't care. Or at least didn't care enough. He never would.
Maybe it really wasn't in his nature or he just chose not to; Sally didn't know.
It was good that he was helping them, yes. But he didn't do it for the victims. No. Just for the fun of it. For the excitement. The rush or whatever.
And so it hadn't mattered to him when it was her own brother lying there in the morgue. It hadn't mattered that she was crying her eyes out. That she had barely been able to function because of the grief.
Sherlock had just taken one look at her and told her that caring was not an advantage. Not one comforting word. No hug, no reassurance, nothing. He had just gone on with business as usual. As if it hadn't mattered.
And to him it hadn't, she supposed.
Of course he managed to find the murderer. In record time even. Two days of running around, and he brought the two bank robbers to the Yard personally.
And yet, something had been broken between them ever since. At first they hadn't spoken to each other outside crime scenes at all anymore and then even all their exchanges at work had turned into arguments.
And the nickname 'Freak' had turned into something else. Something she loathed.
It wasn't a silly way of teasing him anymore. Not like it had been ever since that day when they had met at that goddamn school, where the two of them had been the outsiders - the freaks. She because of her skin colour and Sherlock because he was, well... Sherlock. He was different.
Back then that had even intrigued her.
#
The mocking laughter was something which Sally could already hear before she went around the corner. It was well known to her since she was usually the one who was being laughed at. The one who was called coon, nigger or any other derogatory term associated with her skin colour.
She hated it.
It was not like she could do anything to change it, could she? So why did everyone hate her because of it? She couldn't understand that.
Thus, she already sympathised with the person who was being mocked before she even saw them. Trying to think how she could help, she peeked around the corner and found several kids kicking a boy with dark, curly hair. It didn't look like he was much older than her. She didn't know the kid, but that wasn't surprising as she had just transferred to this school a month ago when she and her mum had moved to London.
"Hey, freak, what do you say now? Not so clever now, are you?" A bigger boy, whom she identified as Mark Miller, the school bully, screamed at the victim, who was cowering on the floor with his bag and all its contents strewn around him.
The boy on the ground just huffed at him."I regret to inform you that I am still much cleverer than you. You don't even know proper grammar. And wait until Freddy realises it was you who stole his Gameboy!"
"You are a liar!" he screamed. "A filthy liar."
The other boy took several hits while he tried to scramble away, and Sally decided she needed to intervene now as the other kids were starting to hold him down.
"Hey, leave him alone!" she yelled. Everyone turned towards her.
When Mark saw her he simply laughed. "Oi, look at this. The freak has a freaky girlfriend! How cute!"
It took all of her willpower to not throw herself onto the bully. "I´m not a freak and I don't even know him. But I just saw two girls running to get Mrs Hover. And you know what she said the last time when you bullied me in class. If she caught you stirring up trouble again, there´d be consequences. I´m just giving you a friendly warning."
She grinned. Or she tried to, as of course there were no girls and Mrs Hover had probably left the school already. And it was an incredibly stupid idea but was all Sally could come up with on such short notice. But she and the other boy were vastly outnumbered so it was their only chance.
To her horror Mark didn't seem to buy it. "So what? What will she do? Scold me again?" To emphasise his bravado, he kicked the curly-haired boy in the shin.
"Well, I´m sure your parents will be pleased when you have to change schools again," the boy on the ground snarled back to Sally´s surprise. She was beginning to like him already. Whoever stood up to Mark Miller couldn't be all bad.
"He's right, you know? Oh wait. I can already hear her! Mrs Hover?" She turned around for emphasis and to her surprise Freddy actually grabbed Mark´s arm and began to tear his friend away. Luckily the others weren't far behind.
In a matter of seconds, Mark and his troop had vanished, leaving only the echoing threat, " Catch you later, freak!"
Sally took a deep breath of relief and thanked God or whatever higher entity there was that Mark and his bullies weren't the brightest. If they had thought about her story, they would have seen it didn't really made sense. Luckily they didn't.
Then she started to help the boy collect his belongings, which were still scattered all over the playground. Most of them were intact but his chemistry book – from which she realised that he must be in Year Six as well - had a few torn pages and a large footprint on the cover.
"I´m sorry, but I don't think you can save this. Maybe your parents will buy you a new one before the teacher sees it?"
The boy didn't seemed to care. He just took it from her and stuffed it into his bag."What are you still doing here anyway?"
"You looked like you needed help."
The boy looked appalled. "I don't need help. I´m fine all on my own." He stood up and gathered his things, intent on nothing other than getting away.
"So you wouldn't like to be friends?"
That stopped him. "You wouldn't want to be my friend. Nobody does."
"Well. I´m not nobody, am I?" she inquired. "I just thought you´d like to have a new friend as well. I always like new friends and I´m still pretty new here, that's all. But if you don't want to..."
He was looking at her intently now, assessing, and as she would later learn, deducing her. She had meant what she said, and the boy didn't seem to find any faults in her.
"Okay," he said.
"Cool. What's you name then, freak?" She smiled at him, but the boy, still wary, didn't smile back.
"Sherlock."
"Interesting name. I'm Sally - the other freak. Nice to meet you."
#
And it had worked. Against all odds they had become close. Or as close as one could get to Sherlock Holmes.
They studied together at school. And called each other 'Freak', just for fun. Between them it was a badge of pride. They were different than the others, yes, but with a partner in crime, it was a difference they relished. They met up in the afternoons to run through the woods, where they´d always find things to investigate.
#
"Captain, Captain, the ship is going to sink if we don't get the water out!" Sally all but screamed and scrambled over the ship's railing which they had build out of branches in the woods.
Other kids had tree houses, but they had built themselves a tree ship. They were both quite proud of it. And even if it was a little silly, to use Sherlock´s word, to be playing pirate at twelve years old, neither of them minded. They loved it and as long as nobody saw them even the otherwise so grown-up Sherlock would let his guard down and be a child for a while.
Sally loved her friend for that. One moment he could play pirates, and the next he´d explain things to her like an adult, as he read and knew a lot. She always learned new things with him. But that didn't mean she didn't have things to teach him. Just like now, as Sherlock had spotted at a poor, small, shivering rabbit and picked up a large branch, heading for it.
That was when Sally´s alarm bells started to ring. Ever since she and Sherlock had found a dead fox in the woods, already being eaten by worms and beetles, the brown-haired boy seemed to be fascinated by death. He had deduced that the fox had been killed by a big dog and from then on had become obsessed with such things. Every dead creature he saw, he deduced. He began actively searching for road kills, and now it looked like he might even start killing animals himself. Sally had to put a stop to this before it began.
"Freak, you can't do that!" she shouted before he reached the rabbit. "How can you even think about killing such a beautiful creature?"
Sherlock just looked at her and told her that he wanted to know what made it tick. How it worked. Sally shook her head at him.
"You can learn so much more from things that are alive," she told him. She could tell from the way he was regarding her that he wasn't convinced. "Freak, please. Look at it, it hasn't done anything to you. And... I mean... you learn so much from me, right? But you wouldn't kill me. Because if you did that you´d never know what makes me tick. If you kill something it stops ticking. I´d just be a lifeless shell. And you can't learn much from a lifeless shell, right? It´s a rather limited way of learning about a creature. If you want autopsies stick with things which are already dead. There´s enough dying in the world already."
Desperately she thought for a second. "Or ask a vet. I´m sure they´d be happy to help if you tell them you want to follow in their footsteps..."
Sherlock was still simply looking at her, contemplating. A vet? Way too much hassle, she could practically hear him thinking.
"Damn it, Sherlock Holmes, if you kill this poor rabbit then I´ll be pissed. And sad. And I won't be your friend any more!"
#
Luckily Sherlock had agreed.
Yet it was his strange fascination with death that brought him to criminal cases right after he detoxed from the drugs. That had been the incentive with which she had lured him to a crime scene the first time, and he had stayed for the puzzles, the rush and the rest.
He had found a new hobby which was better than drugs and that was all that had counted at the time.
Sally was sure she had done the right thing back then.
She was still sure of it, even as Sherlock became more and more obsessed with the most gruesome of murders. Sally watched from the sidelines, but as time went on she picked up on a change and began fearing that she wouldn't be enough. Sherlock was so interested in murderers, in what made them tick, that she feared he would try it himself one day. She would do everything in her power to stop him, if it came to that.
Hopefully it would be enough.
And then shortly before David transferred over to them, her brother had died and everything changed. David and Sherlock never hit it off and it was easier to jump onto that bandwagon, because it seemed to be one of the rare things that actually annoyed Sherlock.
And at that time she wished she could hurt him back, like he had hurt her. Just once.
When John Watson had shown up, Sally was torn between trying to save him and hoping that he would be the one who could rein Sherlock in.
She had no idea what to do with the freak anymore. It wasn't her job anyway. Was it?
Now if only she could make herself stop caring...
#
And then Sherlock came to her one night, just after Moriarty fled from his staged court case. Sally wasn't happy to see the freak, let alone have him in her flat, but what gave her pause was the fact that he was asking for help.
Sherlock Holmes didn't ask for help. Never. He didn't believe he ever needed it. It had been like that from their first meeting, and even after they had become friends, that hadn't changed. Sure, Sally had helped him from time to time, but always under protest from him. He´d never come to her and asked willingly. Sometimes that had hurt.
And yet here he was standing in front of her with pleading eyes.
"Sally, I need your help. You are the only one who can help me with this." She relented and let him in. Why was it so hard to stop caring again? She should have done so ages ago, yet here she was.
He told her all about Moriarty and his crime web. The problem appeared to be even greater than she had imagined.
"I´m going to have to take a fall, Sally. I don´t have another choice. He´s not going to stop before he has brought me down. And I want it to be someone..." Someone I trust, went unspoken, but Sally understood what he meant.
"So I´m going to accuse you of something that you haven't done and make sure you´ll get convicted?" She shook her head. She didn't like this one bit.
Sherlock nodded. "Please. He is dangerous, Sally, and I fear he will target John, Mrs Hudson, even Molly. He won't stop there. He might go after Lestrade, and the rest of the Yarders aren't safe, either. Not even you or Anderson. All because you are associated with me."
Sally sighed. "I..."
"Freaky, please."
She shuddered at the use of her childhood nickname.
"I have no idea what else to do. There´s no one else I can ask. It would be too unbelievable if Lestrade or John suddenly ..."
She nodded and took a deep breath. "Okay."
Sherlock smiled grimly. He had won, but he, too, seemed uncomfortable.
"And how will I know? When will you...?"she asked.
"Don't worry, you will. We just need to continue as before."
Yeah, grumble and hate each other, she thought. It wasn't as if this would change anything. They still weren't friends anymore.
Sherlock, though, didn't seem to mind. He got up to leave, but stopped in front of the door.
"I´m sorry, you know. About Tim. I wish I had known. I should have known what would happen... I..." He hesitated, his hand hovering over the doorknob. "I hadn't learned enough from him yet and I couldn't deal with that." Sherlock shook his head and stole a glance at her before he opened the door. "Never mind. Take care of yourself, freaky."
And with that he was gone.
Sally cried herself to sleep that night.
#
While they were working the kidnapping case Sally already an inkling that something bad would be happening soon. She turned out to be right when they found the kids and brought them back to the Yard. The case was too weird. Then, when she was alone in the office with the freak, she noticed something on the other side of the street.
I. O. U.
Sherlock was right: their opponent was obsessed, and not in a good way. Sally pretended that she hadn't seen anything and played dumb, although all her instincts urged her to sound the alarm and have the other building searched for this lunatic. She would have loved to ask the freak straight out if this was it, if this was the case.
But of course she couldn't.
She had to be the Judas.
Sherlock seemed to be thinking the same thing from the way he looked. He clearly wasn't comfortable, so Sally complimented him on his work. And meant it. She was glad he had been able to save the kids.
It was when Sherlock actually thanked her that she knew this was the turning point.
Sherlock never thanked anyone. She tried to sound careless and snippy, like she hadn't meant it, although from the way Sherlock looked at her he seemed to know the truth.
"Unbelievable," she muttered, trying to play her role and not burst into tears.
Sherlock hesitated for a second before he went out.
I'm sorry, freak, was all Sally could think at the moment.
She hoped she was doing the right thing.
#
It all became a bit of a blur after that. The girl screamed, making it easy for Sally to accuse Sherlock. David, of course, believed her instantly but Greg took a bit of convincing.
When she and Greg and went to Baker Street to confront him, she deliberately stayed downstairs. She feared she would give herself away and tell him to run. Yet Sherlock seemed to know instinctively that she was there, which made her even more uncomfortable.
Damn it, freak. I can't do this, she thought to herself, yet she went on.
Of course Sherlock didn't want to come to the Yard with them, so they had to return with uniforms. She nearly laughed when John clocked the Superintendent, because he totally deserved it. And still she continued to play her role. When Sherlock took John as his "hostage" she panicked a bit, not because she was afraid he would do anything to John, but because she was afraid that they would shoot an armed Sherlock.
Luckily, the two men got away unscathed and she had to go on on playing "hunter" without any real intention to catch the prey.
#
It was nearly five in the morning when she got back to the Yard. Everyone was tired and agitated because they hadn't found Sherlock.
After another conference she noticed a strange envelope on her desk. She opened it immediately. To everyone else the message would not have looked like anything other than a strange set of symbols, but Sally knew better. Sherlock and she had invented a language when they were kids so they could write to each other undetected by adults and other idiots. She´d know those symbols anywhere.
MOBILE: TAKE MY CARD
was all it said. Sally sighed. Yep, great, freak. I would if I had any idea where your phone might be.
Damn it!
Just as she destroyed the paper, she saw Greg take a call then literally crumple, the phone still in his hand. It didn't take long to get out of him what had happened: Sherlock had jumped from the roof of Bart's.
In front of John.
He had killed himself, apparently after announcing that he had been a fake.
Sally felt sick. She ran to the toilet and threw up all the coffee and sandwich bits she had hastily devoured while chasing the detective. When she had herself under control again, she went with Greg, David and the others to secure the scene at Bart's.
It was there where she found the damn mobile. As she couldn't take the whole thing without being noticed she took out the SIM card and pocketed it.
It was the least she could do. She still couldn't believe that the freak... her freak … was dead.
And he sure as hell wasn't a fake. An unmitigated arse from time to time? Sure, yes. But his deductions had been real. So why had he lied to John?
There was something else going on here, she was sure of it.
Or she was going mad.
Either way, it wasn't good.
Hours of exhausting and mind-numbing procedure later, she found herself in her flat, trying to put the card into her phone. She was lucky: Sherlock hadn't locked it with a password. She started to search through the directories.
It didn't take long for her to find the recording. She cried nearly the whole time while she listened to it and really lost it when Sherlock started to talk to John.
Damn it, freak, you loved the guy and yet you jumped in front of him? Why did you hurt him like that? She was angry for a few seconds before she stopped dead in her tracks. He had said something that caught her interest.
She pushed rewind and listened to it again.
"..It's a trick. Just a magic trick..." and "Keep your eyes fixed on me. Please, will you do this for me?"
Sally sobbed and snorted at the same time. Sherlock sounded like a magician. Someone who was about to do a great trick and was sure that his audience - John and the snipers in this case - were watching his every move. It was either that - a trick- or the consulting detective had gone completely bonkers before his jump.
Sally decided it was the former after listening to the conversation three more times. Okay, maybe there was also a bit of wishful thinking involved, but she was nearly certain: Sherlock was alive. He faked his death to make sure John, Mrs Hudson and Greg would live.
She had no idea how the hell he did it, but she suspected his brother had something to do with it. Remembering that Sherlock told her that he and Mycroft suspected one of Mycroft´s men was working for Moriarty, she suddenly understood why he entrusted the evidence for clearing his name to her.
It all made sense. Nobody would suspect her of helping him. Especially as she was the one who had got the ball rolling so to speak. Except she hadn't.
But no one could know that, so she would have to continue to play the role of evil, grumpy Sally.
Until the day was right.
Sherlock was probably dismantling Moriarty´s web now. At least she hoped she was right.
Only time would tell.
#
And so Sally went on. She endured Greg shouting at her to get out of his sight and not speaking to her unless he had to for work. She didn't say anything when Greg was demoted, although it broke her heart.
She split up with David when he didn't stop bad-mouthing Sherlock, as she could only handle so much hate for him without breaking.
She was okay with John detesting her and made sure to give him a wide berth if she ever saw him around town, as she didn't want to remind him of his loss.
She had also lost a lot that day. Not just the friend who had jumped.
She kept an eye on everyone, making sure they would be okay. Any sign of trouble and she would go to Mycroft for help, no matter how high the risk would be. She knew he had to be watching as well, but another set of eyes couldn't hurt.
She kept waiting, hoping it would be over soon. Always making sure that the phone chip remained carefully hidden. She tried to start clearing Sherlock´s name by clearing all his cases.
As time went on, she thought of Mycroft, who sure as hell would come to her once he had terminated the threat in his organisation. He would know that Sherlock had entrusted the evidence of his innocence to her.
She just had to wait a little while longer and watch everyone around her go through the process of grieving.
And she grieved as well in a way.
With them. For them.
She had tried to warn them, hadn't she?
Because it wasn't easy, being Sherlock Holmes' friend.
END
Still searching for a beta for my longer Sherlock fic. Maybe someone can help?