First time writing Sherlock fanfiction. First attempt, really. I love this show, therefore I hope you enjoy this and I hope I've done it justice.
Disclaimer: No, are you crazy? I don't own this.
whatever remains, however improbable,
must be the truth
"Donovan!"
The woman looks up from where she's working, annoyance stretched over her eyes. There are bags under her eyes; she hadn't slept well yesterday. Tossing and turning in her bed isn't something she's particularly keen on, and in this particular case she was only able to fall asleep at 3 am in the morning.
Anderson is striding towards her, two cups of coffee in his hands. "Got you some coffee. Just the way you like it."
"Anderson," she says as patiently as she can, "I don't like my coffee black." It's sort of a joke between her and Anderson, but even today it's lacking some bite.
Today just feels like it's shaping up to be a bad day.
"So," Anderson says as he crosses over to his desk, "no one's seen Sherlock since last night."
She snorts derisively. "Man's a freak. Course no one can find him."
Her colleague leans back in his chair and props his feet up. "You think we did the right thing, reporting him?"
Donovan contemplates this for a moment. It does seem a little strange, getting the phone call asking about details for the case. The timing was a little too perfect after Sherlock had left the screaming girl alone in the room. Shaking the doubts out of her mind- the light of day tends to do that- she nods. "We've had our doubts about Sherlock for a long time now. He's… suspicious, at best." She doesn't say he's guilty because well, the doubt won't really leave.
Anderson knocks back a swallow before turning to glance at Lestrade's office, where their boss is bent over paperwork. "Lestrade isn't too thrilled, is he now?"
"Didn't leave all night, apparently." Donovan pulls out sugar sachets that she stores in her drawer because Anderson never remembers that she likes her coffee with three spoonfuls of sugar, not just one. She looks over too; Lestrade's just picked up the phone.
"Typical." Anderson snorts.
Donovan rests her chin on her interlocking fingers, watching as her boss turns to face the window, his back to the people milling outside. "Do you think we did the right thing?"
She just needs to hear it, no matter what the answer is. There's a sinking feeling and she wonders if the bread she grabbed on the way out this morning isn't actually stale and if she is in fact about to throw up.
Anderson nods- slowly, but it's there. "The evidence was there," he admits. "How could someone be at every crime scene and solve the crimes we never could?"
"He was a consultant," Donovan adds on to that. "A consultant who beat the police at every turn."
"Who does that?"
"Yeah." Donovan watches Lestrade turn around, hanging up the phone and sitting back down, an unreadable expression on his face. "Yeah. Who does that."
As Lestrade picks up the phone again and begins punching in numbers, Anderson begins shuffling papers on the desk. "D'you reckon we made a mistake?"
"I…" Donovan isn't quite sure how to answer to that one. Last night she had been convinced, utterly convinced that Sherlock Holmes had been behind the kidnapping and the murder cases he'd solved before. Today, she's wavering.
She wonders if it's too late to maybe convince Lestrade that they need to contact Sherlock before he does anything else too stupid.
"I don't know," she says at last. "The case against him, though."
"Yeah." Anderson's jaw sets. "The evidence stacks up."
Follow the evidence, Donovan thinks, isn't that the first thing they teach you when you become a detective?
Just as that thought processes, she sees Lestrade slam his phone down as he leaps to his feet. "Damn it!" she hears him howl- quite a feat, since the walls are glass and are relatively soundproof.
Anderson is on his feet at the same time Donovan leaves her desk. "What in blazes is going on?"
The sick feeling in Donovan's stomach intensifies and she makes a mental note that she's going to go home and throw the bread out. "Dunno. Reckon it's the freak. Maybe he's been found."
They both burst into the office just in time to see Lestrade turn away from them, his fingers gripping his cropped hair. "Boss," Anderson says breathlessly, "what's wrong?"
"He just-" And Lestrade's pacing now, a clear sign that he's upset. Usually he'd be sitting or he'd be standing in one spot, but the fact that he's pacing signifies a much angrier Detective Inspector. "He just- Bart's Hospital- oh my God, I should have known he would do something stupid-"
"What's wrong?" Donovan shouts over Lestrade's fragmented sentences. "What's the freak done now?"
Her boss turns on her at that moment, anger etched in every inch of his usually placid face. "He is not a freak, Sergeant Donovan, his name is Sherlock Holmes and for God's sake, show a little respect to the man who just jumped off a building!"
Donovan's legs give out at that moment as the sick feeling rises to her throat. She gags as Anderson chokes out, "He did what?"
"You heard me," Lestrade snaps. "He jumped off a building about half an hour ago. That was-" He gestures at the phone. "That was Dr. Watson. They've confirmed it."
"Confirmed what?"
"That he's dead, you imbecile!" Lestrade picks up a pen and flings it at the wall, where it clatters off harmlessly and rolls under his cabinet.
"W-why?" Donovan stammers. "Why'd he jump?"
Lestrade's shoulders slump as his anger turns into sadness. "Dunno." It seems even more final, even more horrific that the Detective Inspector doesn't know. The man who could handle Sherlock, the man who was the mediator between Sherlock and his own team, the man who had stood up for Sherlock time and time again- doesn't know. For once, he has no reassuring words to say, no peace to give, no answers to provide.
The world is upside down and Sally Donovan isn't quite sure how to deal with it.
The three of them stand there silently staring off into space as outside, the world goes on. Finally, Lestrade breaks the silence. "Go home."
"We can't just-" Anderson begins.
"That's an order. Go. Home." Lestrade sits down heavily behind his desk. "I don't… I don't want to see you two anymore today."
"That's not fair-" Anderson protests, but Donovan breaks in.
"Not now, Anderson. Let's just go." She knows what Lestrade means. It doesn't mean get lost, you two caused this, he means go home, seeing you reminds me too much of Sherlock.
Anderson is beginning to protest again, but Donovan actually drags him out of the office before he can cause too much trouble. She spares a look over her shoulder to see Lestrade bury his head in his hands, a grieving man trapped in a glass cage. "Just go home," she says in a low voice. "We can't do anything here."
Her colleague looks back at their boss, whose shoulders seem to be shaking. "So what now, d'you reckon?"
"We go home. Watch a bit of telly. Avoid the news. And then we come back and do our jobs. Same as usual." Donovan ignores the voice in her head that says, might be a bit boring now that Sherlock's gone and kicked the bucket. "We're doing no good being here."
"Shouldn't we at least take him out for a cuppa?"
Donovan considers this for a moment. "I'll get it for him. You just… you just go home, Anderson." She forces a smile. "I'll see you tomorrow morning."
She gets the tea, puts it down in front of Lestrade. He doesn't thank her, doesn't respond other than a nod in her direction as he studiously stares at a report about a petty theft four blocks over. Donovan doesn't say anything either. She only grabs her coat and goes home.
Well, she tries to. She takes a detour instead.
…
There's a woman wailing when she arrives on the front doorstep of 221B Baker Street.
The door's partially opened, so Donovan gently pushes it all the way in to find Doctor Watson- John, she thinks his name is- sitting on the steps comforting an elderly woman. (Mrs. Hudson, that's right, she'd heard Sherlock bellow it more than once. Nice lady. Never mean to Donovan or Anderson, even though her tenant took no caution in restraining his tongue.)
Both occupants look up and have two completely different reactions. Mrs. Hudson dissolves into a louder wail, a cry that seems to echo through the entire apartment and rattle the walls. John's face tightens into a mask. "What do you want, Sergeant Donovan? Surely you can't be coming around to ask how we are."
Donovan shuffles her feet. He is angry. And he has every right to be, to be perfectly honest- his best mate's gone and thrown himself off a building because she began the vicious cycle of tearing him apart. He might have thrown himself off a building because she said some things, and however true they might have been, she knows now that there could have been a lot more tact involved.
In a way, Sally Donovan might have been responsible for the death of Sherlock Holmes, and she's perfectly aware that the man in front of her knows it too.
"I'm sorry," she says at last, her voice cracked and shivery.
Mrs. Hudson continues to sob into her sweater while John stares at her. Finally, he turns away and begins ushering Mrs. Hudson upstairs. "It'll be alright, Mrs. Hudson. Don't fret. Sherlock wouldn't want that now, would he?"
Donovan stays downstairs, unsure if she should follow or not. Instead, she stares at the marks left on the stairs and walls, scuff marks and scars on the wall caused by knives and skittering bullets. She tries to read them, see if maybe Sherlock left a clue here, but she is left blank.
John comes down the stairs, his face still unreadable. "Fancy a cuppa?" he asks, his tone still stoic and flat.
"No," she stammers, "no, I already had one at the station." She follows John into the kitchen, where he begins putting a kettle on the stove and filling it with water.
They both stay like that as the kettle whistles merrily- her at the table nervously twisting her gloves, and him with his back turned to her. Finally, she speaks up. "Why'd he do it?"
He laughs bitterly. "Your guess is as good as mine, Sergeant." He is quiet for a bit. "He called me for his last words. Said he was a fake. That he'd made everything up. Guess maybe he was tired of the whole charade."
Donovan can't believe her ears. The man she accused last night admitted to the whole ordeal being false… and yet, she can't believe it. Not fully. "Surely that's not true?"
"What would you-" John's tightly controlled façade breaks. "What would you know about Sherlock? For God's sake, you came in here last night and arrested him because you thought he kidnapped two children!"
"The evidence was piling up against him," Donovan tries to defend herself.
"The evidence was FABRICATED," John bellows, spinning around and slamming a spoon down on the table. His eyes are tired, but there's some sort of anger burning in there and Donovan wonders how she missed the depths of this man's loyalty. "Moriarty, we've been telling you for ages, it was Moriarty, and you lot just sat there on your arses and didn't do a single blasted thing about it!"
"The jury let him go."
"You didn't believe Sherlock when he said Moriarty was smarter than most criminals. You didn't believe Sherlock when he said that Moriarty could use you, all of you."
It falls together then, pieces of the puzzle clicking together. The phone call, the reporter who'd known about the details of the case. The man who asked about the footprint and then marveled at how quickly Sherlock had deduced who'd taken the children. The person who had planted the seed of doubt in Donovan's head.
By Jove, she really is responsible for Sherlock's death. The sickness is coming back up into Donovan's throat. "I…" she croaks.
The kettle goes off then, and John turns back almost gratefully to remove it from the stove. "How's Lestrade taking it?" he asks in an effort to change the subject.
"He won't talk to anyone."
"Sounds like Lestrade." John pours the tea into two teacups, ignoring Donovan's weak protests. "Sounded queer when I rang."
"He was…" Donovan picks up her teacup, hearing it rattle against the saucer as her shaky fingers betray her nerves. "Yes."
The silence stretches in the room again, thick and oppressive.
She can bear it no longer. "It's just that," she blurts out again. "It's just that the evidence all added up. How could Sherlock have known all those tiny details, all those random deductions, solved those cases so quickly?"
"He was brilliant," John says quietly.
"Brilliant men don't-" Sally catches her breath.
"Brilliant men don't what, Sally?" John meets her eyes.
"…they don't jump off buildings."
He looks down at his teacup and she sees his mouth twist downwards. "They don't."
"You still think he's innocent, then?"
John must be exhausted from the day, because he doesn't even bother arguing with Donovan now. He only sits down heavily opposite her, his fingers still curled around his teacup. "Yes. I do."
"Why?"
"The man was brilliant, Sally. There's just no way around it." John rubs his face with his left hand. "Couldn't you tell?"
"When someone insults me every time they see me, I tend to stop listening," Donovan says dryly.
John actually barks out a laugh at that one. "Yes, Sherlock did have that tendency, didn't he?" His eyes lighten a bit when a memory comes back to him. "Did I ever tell you about the time he managed to ban himself from Manchester for a week?"
"You know, I heard stories about that in the station," Donovan chuckles. "What happened?"
She sits in the kitchen for the next hour and a half, listening to John Watson talk about his best mate. She wonders if any of her friends have the same sort of admiration John displays.
…
"And so," John is finishing the story of his first case with Sherlock, "he tries to rebuff me, tells me that he's married to his work-"
"No," Donovan laughs. "He did not."
"He did." John grins as he pours himself another cup of tea. "First time I've ever seen Sherlock wrong about anything really, hasn't been much like that since." He adds in some milk, stirs the teaspoon and it clinks against his cup. "When was the first time you met Sherlock?"
She tries to remember. "December. Two years ago, I reckon. Murder up on Whitechapel, victim horribly, horribly mutilated. Well, Lestrade had worked with Sherlock before, so he managed to call him down to the scene and would you know it, the man had it solved in five hours."
"Awful long for him," John commented.
"Would have taken us weeks, maybe." Donovan shakes her head when John makes to pour her another cup. "Five hours, but he was vicious. Called me an imbecile for not seeing the woman's hands were clearly chipped, thus showing that she wasn't an unnamed prostitute like I had assumed. Then he-" She stops, because she wonders if maybe she's gone too far, insulting John's best mate in his own home. "Well. You don't need to know."
"Anderson and you?" John guesses- an uncanny guess.
"Why, yes," she says, startled. "We'd just begun a relationship and-"
"So he was right about that," John says softly.
"Isn't he always when it comes to people?" she asks.
"Most of the time." John sips at his tea. "If he's so useful to the Yard… why did you arrest him last night?"
His tone isn't accusing- it's bland, unconcerned even; but Donovan isn't as stupid as Sherlock says she is, so she notices the white knuckles and tensed jaw.
"Looking out for the greater good of the Yard," she says simply. "The evidence was there. It was impossible for him to have solved all those cases by himself. I just-" She stops again.
"You just didn't know if he was good enough," John says helpfully.
"It was too great a leap of faith," she admits.
He is silent for a moment. "You know something Sherlock always used to say?"
"I can think of many things he used to say," she says dryly. "But no."
"He always used to say 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth'." John props his chin on his hand. "But that means different things to you and me, clearly."
"How so?"
John pauses. "Well," he says at last, "it seems to me that you find it impossible to believe that he was the most brilliant man to walk the streets of London. You eliminated that. The only thing left is to believe that he was a fraud, a villain."
"And you think otherwise?"
John laughs bitterly. "Sergeant Donovan-"
"Sally," she corrects him.
"Sally," he amends, "I think I've made my position perfectly clear. I think Sherlock Holmes was one of the best men I have ever had the privilege of knowing. To me, the impossible is that he was a fraud… he simply wasn't. Therefore… no matter how improbable…"
"I see," she simply says.
John forces a tight smile. "Well, the point's out the window, I reckon. Nothing we can do about it now." He gets up from his chair and Donovan stands as well, sensing that the conversation has ground to a halt. "It was a pleasure seeing you, Sergeant Donovan." He's back to standing stiffly at attention, reminding Donovan of the soldier that he used to be.
"John." She takes a step towards him, wanting to say something, wanting to say she's sorry that he's lost Sherlock, sorry that she had to be so hard-handed on him, sorry that all this mess is her fault. But the word dies on her lips, because she doesn't know how to apologize really for doing her job.
She tries, nevertheless. "My condolences, John."
"Thank you." He is walking her towards the door.
"If there's anything the Yard can do-"
"There isn't."
"Oh." She's outside on the porch now, facing a tight-lipped John Watson. "Well… my condolences again, Dr. Watson."
"Thank you," he says again. "For coming."
She tries to smile, but it's a futile attempt. "You're welcome, Dr. Watson."
"Good evening, Sally." The door closes on her, and she's left staring at the sign: 221B Baker Street.
Outside, it begins to rain.
…
Months down the road, details begin to emerge. Donovan, being Lestrade's right hand assistant, hears all of them as Lestrade sits there and tries to puzzle them out with his team.
Three assassins, three targets. Lestrade was one of them. Donovan shudders when she thinks about how close her boss was to suffering the same fate as Sherlock Holmes. How they all might have grieved. Then she hears the other two names, and her blood chills- Mrs. Hudson? And John Watson? Later, she thinks about it and realizes that it made sense, targeting the three people Sherlock was closest to.
She thinks about it more, and begrudgingly admires Sherlock Holmes for throwing himself off a roof just to save those three people.
No, not begrudgingly- she does.
She goes over sometimes to see John, help him pack away Sherlock's belongings- and goodness, there is a lot of ground to cover. Most nights, they taper off into them talking by the fireplace, a pot of tea between them. They talk about Donovan's problems with Anderson, or Lestrade's coping with Sherlock's death, or sometimes even about John himself, even though he's reluctant to discuss how he's coping after about five minutes. Sometimes they talk about superficial things, like John's new girlfriend, or her intention to apply for a promotion. Most nights they share stories about Sherlock, and Donovan finds that there are actual memories of the man that aren't tainted by her incredible dislike towards him.
"He was a hero, wasn't he?" she asks one night.
"He didn't believe in heroes," John says absently, categorizing Sherlock's immense collection of books.
"Doesn't matter," she shrugs.
"He'll always be a hero to me." John just keeps on putting books in boxes. "But I know your stance on Sherlock…" In the wake of Sherlock's death, weeks after the pain has had its glory days and months after he has learned how to cope and move on, he is able to accept Donovan's disagreement on his views, especially if they concern Sherlock Holmes.
Instead: "He was a hero," she says thoughtfully, almost to herself.
John looks up at her. "Sorry?"
"I said, he's a hero." Donovan sighs. "Trust me, it pains me to say it…"
John almost smiles at that one. "So. You heard about…" He catches himself. "Of course you did. You work with Lestrade after all."
She sees him swallow when the day replays in his head, sees him unconsciously roll his shoulders to try and cope with the grief welling up. She doesn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to see him blink five times in succession, see his face twist before he turns back to packing. Sometimes she feels bad for being there, because he talks about Sherlock and it clearly hurts- but he'd mentioned once that he only ever talks about Sherlock with her now, and truth be told she still feels guilty.
So she stays and lets him tell his stories, lets him get his grief out.
Now, she stands from her seat near the fireplace, and walks to where he is leaning over a box, trying not to let himself break. "He was a hero," she says as assertively as she can, placing a hand on John's shoulder. "And if you believe it, then it's true. I believe it, too."
"You sound so sure of yourself," John says, smiling now.
"Only eliminating the impossible. It's impossible that someone who died to save his loved ones wouldn't be considered a hero… therefore, Sherlock Holmes is a hero. However improbable that may seem." Donovan smiles back.
John nods, his fingers gripping the sides of the box. "Thanks, Sally."
"Mmhmm."
Sure, Sally Donovan would still punch Sherlock if she ever saw him again, but there's a part of her now that admires the man. And maybe it's always been there, but she's never thought to listen to it.
Sometimes, she looks outside the window when John's making tea in the kitchen and sees a tall figure disappear into the shadows opposite the street. Sometimes, she wonders if the face caught in the light is a trick of her imagination. That maybe, maybe Sherlock is-
-but then, she eliminates the impossible, sighs, and goes back to helping John pack up Sherlock's belongings.
No, Sally and John are not a couple. I'm just going to throw that out there right now. Reviews and comments, as always, are appreciated :) You'll get hugs from me!
Much love,
ohlookrandom