Life is a game,
It's simple and true,
And all that you can do,
Is sit and wonder what's in it for you,
And how you play this game of life,
Well, that's up to you.
-Life is a Game by Angel of Love
CHAPTER 1:
No one in their right mind would doubt that Sally Donavan was a dedicated public server.
She was a police officer and an investigator, catching baddies is almost second nature. But one thing that Sally was that she wasn't always proud of was self-righteous. Her instincts that drive her to certain things and refuse to acknowledge the possibility of defeat had always been her one fatal flaw.
But one thing Sally Donavan was not is cold.
Sherlock Holmes was brilliant but he was also cold.
And Sally immediately pounced on the idea that the combination was a flaw in nature.
It just wasn't right to give a man this heartless the capacity to create and think in certain ways only a superhuman can. Though she would be loathe to admit that it did impress her, the way he could deduce and analyze as fast as the speed of light but that admiration died the second he opened his mouth and used that same prowess to humiliate and insult her as well as the rest of her colleagues.
Though Sally Donavan hated Sherlock Holmes, she would never wish him dead. Discredit him, maybe, as a grudge she couldn't resist giving in to. But not dead. And surely not the way he had thrown himself off that ledge.
Eight months of thorough investigation later, it had been for the reasons she had wrongly assumed. She had discovered, with the help of secret government agents, that there really was a man named James Moriarty. He alone had organized and killed and manipulated certain people that drove Sherlock to the ground. Sally being one of those manipulated people.
He had killed himself to save his friends because Moriarty had put a gun to certain people's heads and forced him to do such a condescending act. This was all found as a recording in Sherlock Holmes's phone. That same one he used to call John Watson for the very last time to say his goodbyes. That very same one he threw on the ground to be found and clear his name before he threw himself off that roof to save the people he cared about, proving Sally Donavan wrong again of him being a heartless psychopath.
Sherlock Holmes is an innocent man.
A disturbingly clever and sociopathic man but innocent nonetheless.
She felt so ashamed of what she had done. She had paved the way for Moriarty to destroy the one man that could've stopped the consulting criminal and she had let him used her. She had let herself be taken away by her bitterness and poison her better judgment.
She was jealous of Sherlock.
Everyone was jealous of Sherlock.
Even Anderson.
Especially Anderson.
But none of that could bring him back.
None of this shame, empathy and repentance could bring the Reichenbach hero back.
Because Sherlock Holmes was exactly that, a hero. Albeit a dark one but a hero.
Sally shook her head to clear her thoughts.
She had only just seen on the telly before she got called to work about the news of Sherlock being proved to be an innocent man along with the Crown's support and gratitude to the man. It had taken a year to clear the consulting detective's name with the other two months of writing paper work and releasing it to the press and having the Prime Minister himself and some other high up government officials to present an award to the man who caught one of the century's most feared international criminal and gather all the other private cases Sherlock had solved all throughout his life and have been read all around the world with the help of a certain army doctor blogger.
Honored like a hero, indeed, Sally bitterly mused to herself.
She entered the scene confidently, privately admiring the entirety of the mansion. Marble walls and ceilings, Victorian chandeliers, elegant tapestries hung up the wall and exquisite interior. It was as if stepping into a smaller version of the Buckingham Palace. She took note of the guests, dressed in tuxedos and dresses as elegant as the manor itself. A simple and private cocktail party, she concluded.
But to whom this party was dedicated to was the real prize.
"Who's our victim?" she asked Lestrade who stood in the threshold, unmoving and gaping.
He gave no reply. In fact, his eyes were widened comically and his whole posture was rigid. Sally frowned. Who could've possibly evoked such an expression out of the Detective Inspector like that?
She stood behind him, peeking into the room, since he still was unmoving and gaping.
There she was. She had long and silky curls dangling behind her, a sky blue backless dress clung to her amazing forms and curves, her lips lush and pink and her grey eyes filled with tears about ready to fall. The prized and honored guest; Laura Lightwood, supermodel and pathologist.
But Sally could now see that Ms. Lightwood was not the reason of her boss's shameful and open gaping. It was because of the man crouched beside the dead body. The sight gave Sally a sense of nostalgia, disbelief, relief and a foreign excitement raging inside her.
"Think harder and I assure you, Lestrade, you will hurt that puny little brain of yours." He said. Sally had never thought in her entire life that she would miss hearing those insults.
Because they could only come from one man.
A man who now stood, alive and well and as brilliant as ever, before them, his sharp grey eyes analyzing like lasers for the slightest clues and deducing everything and anything.
Sherlock Holmes.
NOTES: inspired from the song Doomsday (Doctor Who Sountrack)