This is an experiment in how well I can write for a story that will not contain slash, or romance of any sort (a first for me, a fandom I don't want to inject romance into!) and is largely based off the BBC show I've never laid eyes on save a few Tumblr posts, a trailer for Scandal in Belgravia, and numerous spoof videos.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to any Sherlock Holmes adaptation, ever.
Chapter I: A Study in Deduction
Young woman found next to Thames. Come quickly. –L
From the kitchen, John could see Sherlock smile, then frown, then smile again. He wondered what aspects of the case the consulting detective got out of the apparently revealing text, but he wouldn't have understood it anyway.
"Oh, John, are you coming?" Sherlock asked, picking up his coat. "We've got a case."
"I've got a date," John complained. Louise Mortimer must have been impressed with his flirting. More likely, she had simply wanted to get away from Henry, even if she fully accepted that his actions were the result of a pressure-released, mind-altering aerosol spray.
"Fine," Sherlock said easily. "I'll go without you."
The unusually tall brunet had only just gotten in his taxi when a disgruntled ex-Army doctor climbed into the seat, phone still in hand.
"How did she take it?" Sherlock asked, amused.
John glared, and Sherlock's face softened for just a second before he started pointing out once again how much easier his own life was without bothering with notions as silly as sentiment. John tuned him out. He'd only hear "Punch me in the face" anyhow, and if he tried, that soft look would haunt him for ages. Luckily, he didn't have to fight his urges for very long. The taxi turned off the bridge and dropped them off. Sherlock immediately got out, leaving John to, once again, deal with the bill and hope fervently that he had enough. Once he figured he had, he walked up to Sherlock, who appeared to be done with his examination of the body and was heavily immersed in insulting Lestrade's intelligence.
"Where's the woman?" he asked.
"What are you talking about?" John asked, walking up. "She's right here," he gestured to the body in the red silk dress on the ground. Her fingernails had some lighter red material in them.
"Lestrade's seen enough corpses to stop imbuing them with unnecessary personality" Sherlock said with an arrogant sniff. "If that," he nudged the dead woman with his toe, "had been the only female besides Donovan here, he would have used the word 'body,' not 'woman,' and certainly not the adjective 'young' before it."
John nodded. "Right," he said, completely lost and no longer able to care about following Sherlock's logic.
"I had Donovan take her to the hospital," Lestrade said hesitantly. "She, er, well," he rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Anderson, who was carefully applying disinfectant to eight crescent-moon-shaped cuts on his arms. "He didn't like what she told him about his…infidelity." The detective inspector's tone left little doubt that this young woman, whoever she was, had used far less flattering words. John found himself unable to repress a smile.
Sherlock's expression made it clear that he wasn't even trying. "A woman after my own heart," he said delightedly.
"She has no ID and appears to have amnesia," Lestrade continued. "She initially believed she was seven and living in the state of Virginia in the 2000, but she said her name might be Grace."
"'Young woman' puts her between the ages of 16 and 24," Sherlock said.
To his credit, Lestrade didn't even pause to try to figure out how Sherlock had deduced that. "So, dead woman, then," Lestrade said. "No identification, only a poorly-done swastika tattoo on her wrist. We were thinking this could be the start of a rash of serial ethnic cleansing killings in the area."
"You'd be wrong," Sherlock said. "The swastika isn't backward. It's a Buddhist symbol of peace and wellbeing. The National Socialist Party or Germany turned it backwards and made it famous, but this symbol is the original. Given that the woman is of Chinese origin, it's far more likely that she's a Buddhist who had the symbol tattooed to her wrist at a young age, before the symbol was perverted into something completely opposite its original meaning. The woman is between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five, and married a widower who lives in a city in China."
"How can you possibly tell that the girl's her daughter?" Lestrade asked.
"Look at the material under her nails. They're the same material as the dead woman's dress; that is to say, silk, but the girl's is faded. She wore a hand-me-down dress that was once the same color as this woman's dress. So, clearly, daughter."
"And what about the, er, 'wife' part?" Lestrade asked.
"Oh, god, you can't do anything without me, can you?" Sherlock drew himself up straighter like he always did when he was about to reveal something he believed was obvious. "Look at the dress; it's not handmade like it would be if she was from the country, but it's not mass produced like it would be if it were made here. The most likely conclusion is that it was made in an urban area near her home in China. Now, Lestrade, you said the girl was between the ages of 16 and 24. Either way, this woman would have been in her mid-twenties when she gave birth, which would be normal for the country, but we've just established that she lives in the city. The Chinese have imposed a one-child policy to combat overpopulation, and it's unlikely that anyone in the city would have children that young, knowing that law was in place. Therefore, she was not her husband's first wife. Also, the ring on her finger has been resized to fit a larger finger; the extra metal can be seen in the space between her ring and her index fingers."
Lestrade and John nodded, blinking in confusion and acceptance of his explanation.
"So, the only thing to do now is to go to the hospital and try to jog this girl's memories," Sherlock clapped his hands, apparently excited to meet someone who seemed to hate Anderson as much as he did.
"Um, Sherlock, she has amnesia," John said. "We might not be able to get her memories back, and awakening the trauma brought on by witnessing a crime-"
"John, when she awoke, she believed she was seven. No seven-year-old has the mental capacity to deduce that Anderson's cheating on his wife with Donovan, as obvious as it is, not even me. All this intelligence she developed later, and the fact that her reasoning's still intact and she hasn't fully regressed means that she's still got all this information buried somewhere," Sherlock said. "I've just got to figure out how to unlock the doors to her mind palace."
"Okay, okay, great," John nodded. "What do you want me to do?" he asked, hoping to be useful.
"I want you to keep Donovan busy enough for me to sneak in her hospital room," Sherlock answered.
"And why do you think I'll be able to do that?"
"Lestrade wouldn't have sent Donovan away from the crime scene unless something greatly upset her. She'll be flustered and you could easily keep her occupied while I question the girl," Sherlock said.
John frowned. "Sherlock, from what Lestrade's shown us, this girl's not in the best place, mentally. Are you sure you're the best person to talk to her?"
Sherlock only had to raise an eyebrow at John for the doctor to fall silent as they strode into the hospital.
"What are you two doing here?" Donovan's voice, harsher than usual, had an unusual rasp to it. "Molly's not allowed visitors."
When John looked at her face, it was a little puffy and red. Sherlock, unexpectedly, didn't smirk at her weakness, but he did look extremely (and inappropriately) excited. Donovan started to yell abuse at him, and John stepped in between them quickly, defending Sherlock as usual. Donovan predictably turned her attention to him, and Sherlock slipped into the hospital room before Donovan noticed. There was a click as the door was locked, and Donovan gave a growl of frustration before burying her face in her hands, muttering rude words—directed at himself or his flatmate, John wasn't sure. He was sure, however, that she needed some comforting.
It was a relief to no longer have to hear Sergeant Sally Donovan's voice. It grated on his nerves on her best days, and when she gave into sentiment it was simply intolerable. Unfortunately, Sherlock Holmes was going to have to deal with it for a little longer.
"So, what are you doing here, then?"
He turned, expecting to see Donovan even though he knew she was outside with John. The voice was exactly like hers, save that they came out of a very pretty young woman sitting on a hospital bed, long untidy black hair sticking out everywhere and glasses askew on her nose. The eyes were dark, but there was a brightness behind them that Sherlock thrilled to think might match his own.
"Well?" the girl snarled in Donovan's tone, crossing her arms. Sherlock frowned; the voice was putting him off, and furthermore, she was impossible to read. It was like reading Donovan: the way she paced, the way she watched him like a hawk, the way she eagerly searched for answers.
No, wait, that wasn't Donovan. Sherlock paused, and started looking at the girl again. Her eyes seemed to have gotten brighter, missing nothing, remembering nothing.
"Sherlock Holmes," Sherlock stuck out his hand.
"Charlotte Hong," the girl replied, taking it and shaking with the same amount of vigor as Sherlock displayed. She frowned, and the handshake lagged to something slower, more relaxed. "That's not…that doesn't sound right."
"You identified yourself to Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade as Grace," Sherlock said. Judging by the minor return of Charlotte/Grace's own personality, she was careful, likely to consider all possible consequences before any action.
"Grace Lang," the girl nodded. "I remember. I don't know why I did that," she admitted.
Sherlock had an idea, and grinned widely as he leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially, "Don't worry about that old fart. If I had to talk to him, I'd lie, too."
Charlotte/Grace looked deeply uncomfortable, like she was hiding something, and Sherlock immediately smoothed the smile off his face. It was an uncomfortable expression; he was relieved to be rid of it. Charlotte/Grace looked more at ease as well. Hmm…interesting. The girl could feel his discomfort without even being aware of it.
There was a loud bang on the window, and Donovan and John's argument grew louder. Donovan referred to "Molly," whom Sherlock guessed was Charlotte/Grace. Whatever that meant, he hoped John was alright.
"He'll be okay," the girl said, still in Donovan's voice. "She's a police officer, a good person. She wouldn't hurt someone."
Sherlock snorted. The girl was naïve, that much was clear as well. The presence of a Sally turned the girl into a Molly, the presence of a Greg turned the girl into a Grace, and the presence of a genius turned the girl into a Charlotte. But each person had cracks of the girl's original personality.
"Shut up," the girl said unexpectedly, in a voice two octaves lower than her previous one.
Sherlock turned around, surprised. "I wasn't saying anything," he said, trying to sound guileless.
"You were thinking," Charlotte/Grace/Molly said in Sherlock's voice.
"I can't stop thinking," Sherlock said.
"My mind is racing," Charlotte/Grace/Molly said, still in Sherlock's voice.
"Mine, too," Sherlock said. "It's whirling round and round the garden."
"Like a teddy bear," Charlotte/Grace/Molly continued. Her hands reached for the morphine release button. Sherlock handed it to her.
"Around one question," Sherlock waited with bated breath. "Can you guess what it is?"
"What my voice sounds like." Charlotte/Grace/Molly sighed, pressing the button to release a dose. "I wish I could answer. I open my mouth to try to talk, and nothing comes out. I have to think about what voices sound like, and I just use the most recent one." She frowned. "Why did I press the button? I don't need morphine. I'm covered in blood, and none of it is from where I banged my head on the riverbank."
"Post-traumatic stress disorder," Sherlock said decidedly.
Charlotte/Grace/Molly turned to him, eyes shrewd. She continued playing with the morphine drip, fighting the urge to press the button again. "How do you know that?" she demanded.
Sherlock sniffed and shook his sleeves until they fell over his knuckles and made an effort to stop pacing quite so agitatedly. Just as he suspected, Charlotte/Grace/Molly stopped playing with the morphine drip. "I'm a genius, excellent at deduction," he said smugly. "Sudden loud noises alarm you, you shrink away from me, and you're eyeing the door to calculate how long it would take you to get out of the room should I prove to be unsafe."
"If you really were a genius," the girl's voice was different now, far too high-pitched to be mocking Sherlock, or even Sally, "you would know that you practice abductive reasoning, not deductive. Really, you call yourself a rocket scientist?"
Sherlock frowned. "'Rocket scientist?'"
"Someone really smart and good with, like, machines and," the girl chocked.
Sherlock stopped. "Irrelevant," he said.
"Of course it is, you didn't know it," the girl said, this time in John's voice. "Oh, don't be so surprised," she said in Sally's derisive voice. "I could hear him arguing outside before he came in," she nodded toward the door, where John Watson was currently gaping at her.
"Right," John said. "Er, John Watson," he said, waving awkwardly.
"Jane Wang," the girl said in John's voice, waving back just as slowly. She waved faster as she frowned. "That's not my name either."
"I didn't think so," John said. "Donovan said your name was Molly."
"She said her name was Sally," Charlotte/Grace/Molly/Jane gave a growl of frustration remarkably similar to Sherlock's.
"Well, I think we've bothered her long enough," Sherlock said suddenly. "Let's go," he walked out of the room, John following in confusion after him.
"That girl just used my voice," he said, gesturing toward the hospital room.
"Brilliant de…abduction, John. Nothing gets past you, does it?" Sherlock said sarcastically. He shook his head. It didn't matter what that girl thought. It didn't matter at all.
So, what do you think? A triumph? Or should I make a note here: huge failure?