A/N: [SERIES FOUR SPOILERS IN THE AUTHOR'S NOTES] I am still very affected after having watched The Final Problem. I found the episode beautiful in so many ways, but it also stung like I'd never been stung before. I'm trying to work through a lot of feelings so here's the first attempt at doing so. This was inspired by a post I saw on tumblr as to how long Eurus had had her cameras installed in Molly's flat. I thought it a good challenge and a good way to negotiate how I felt about the whole episode. So here's my take on the whole Sherlolly journey through Eurus' eyes. I hope you make sense of this. I won't be surprised if the result is as garbled as my mind currently is. If you came to read it, thank you so much. xx
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CONTAINS
SERIES
FOUR
SPOILERS
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Cameras
There was a certain sense of excitement when James Moriarty had accomplished this most recent task for her. On the pretext of romantic entanglement (as her second brother liked to call it), James had infiltrated the home of a certain Molly Hooper and had been able to plant the surveillance she had requested.
Eurus' fingers were trembling with excitement as she stretched to touch the panel on the monitor. Her eyes lit up once the screen did, their greyish blue reflecting the light from her new window into Molly Hooper's life.
At first, there had been nothing to see and the dullness angered Eurus. She knew her brother still consulted the pathologist on every case he was on, but why her? She was so much like everyone else; in and out, in and out. She made tea, fed the cat, read neuroscience journals, fixed blown bulbs - it was all too dull for Eurus to understand why. Why Molly Hooper?
Then, one evening, Eurus gained her first glimpse of understanding.
"She is your hiding place," murmured Eurus to herself when she saw her brother, in disguise, entering Molly's flat the very day he had faked his death.
However, no sooner had he begun settling into his 'bolthole', a term she had picked up from Mycroft, Sherlock had disappeared. It puzzled Eurus, for Sherlock was always loyal. She remembered his first friend from when they were children and laughed softly to herself. He was so frightfully loyal.
So when Molly had begun a new phase of life and a man that looked oddly like her brother was now living in the flat, Eurus was curious if her brother would come back to his hiding place.
"How loyal are you, Sherlock?" she whispered, watching impassively as Molly and this new man disappeared beneath their sheets. Sipping from a glass of water, she watched the pair and their little dance under their covers and marvelled at the fact that Molly Hooper was clearly lying to herself. With every kiss and every gasp of ecstasy, Molly was lying.
So when months passed and the man no longer lived with Molly, it was only a matter of time that Sherlock would return to his hiding place. This time, Eurus laughed out in amusement when she saw her brother, clearly having escaped from the hospital, pick the lock to Molly's flat and quite literally stumble into her arms.
"Oh, come on, Sherlock. You can walk," smirked Eurus, "You've made it this far to her flat…"
As suddenly as he had arrived, he was soon flying out of her flat. There was that whole business with John and that assassin wife of his to take care of. Eurus was a little surprised it had taken her brother that long to realise. It surprised her even more that Mycroft had kept it from him in the first place.
"I'll never understand you boys…" she said, exhaling dramatically as she sank into her seat.
Some time later, in spite of Eurus' intimate understanding of her brother's loyalty, it caught her completely by surprise, the speed at which her brother rushed to this very same flat the moment his exile had been revoked.
The speed at which he fumbled with his lock-picking tools to burst through Molly Hooper's flat had made Eurus choke on her glass of water. The emotion in his eyes, emotion she had not seen since she had sung her taunting little nursery rhyme to him about Victor, made the corners of her lips lift in a fiendish smirk. The veins in his hands and wrists as he clung on to Molly with all his might; the whispered words that she lip-read with perfect precision; the way his breathing regulated in the presence of the custodian of his hiding place, the custodian of his soul; the measure of his loyalty to this one woman surpassed that of Eurus' expectations.
"Well, well, brother mine," she remarked, clicking her tongue and grinning slightly at having borrowed one of her elder brother's archaic expressions. "If she matters so much, why haven't you said it?"
Eurus spun in her ostentatious chair with its noiseless wheels and impeccable lumbar support, chuckling as she did so. Stopping suddenly, she sat up and peered into her screen again, watching with great interest as her brother unknowingly exposed his most secret vulnerability under her watchful eyes. Her cameras had caught it all, and oh, how it set off Eurus' memories.
"I wonder if Mycroft's got one too…" Eurus murmured, almost singing.
She would worry about Mycroft's later. For now, it was time her favourite brother took a seat behind the camera. It was time for Sherlock to see all that he had been missing, all that he had been careless with. What was more, if Eurus' played her cards right, which was always, Sherlock would finally see what he was be about to lose - all over again.
END