Note: I started this with #SherlockLives trailer but then finals happened so it was delayed. But the minisode happened and reignited my drive to do this so here you go. I think it might be a bit rushed but I wanted this out before I went out of town for a few days with spotty internet. Happy Holidays dear readers!
Twelve months ago, if you told Anderson that he would feel sorry for Sherlock Holmes, he would have laughed and called you a right fool. Twelve months ago he was drunk off glee, high off Holmes's disgrace. No one could have been that clever. It made sense that Holmes was a fraud. Outing him was the best feeling in the world. He'd been commended by the chief superintendent; was probably in line for a raise or promotion. He'd never have to deal with Holmes's interference ever again. The future looked perfect.
That lasted until he saw the news.
Suicide of Fake Genius
Suicide of Fake Genius
Suicide of…
The announcement of Holmes's death was plastered across the front pages of all the papers; inescapable. He'd jumped off the roof of St. Bart's. Apparently, Watson was right there when it happened; was on the phone with him right up until he jumped.
Elation turned into an unnamable gut-wrenching emotion. Where Anderson had once been happy, he now wanted to vomit. He wanted Holmes outed as a fraud, wanted him thrown from the self-built pedestal he placed himself on, wanted to strip away the years of misplaced validation. He never thought Holmes, arrogant as he was, would off himself. Then again, he'd heard that genius often went hand in hand with fragility.
Sally told him it wasn't his fault, but he could tell she didn't fully believe it. He could hear the remorse just under her usual tone of voice. We wanted him gone but not like this.
His wife told him it wasn't his fault. He was doing his job. He suspected Holmes of a crime and had every right to bring it to his senior officer's attention. He did the right thing.
He told himself it wasn't his fault. The look he got from Lestrade whenever they crossed paths told him differently. The look of disappointment and pain that wasn't solely caused by a demotion. Lestrade had listened to his and Sally's complaint and lost his title and his friend.
He told himself it wasn't his fault. Watson's fist in his face argued the contrary. Got a bloody nose, a hell of a bruise on his jaw, and a righteous tongue-lashing. He's grieving, he's not rational right now. Sooner or later he'll see…
It wasn't his fault. It wasn't his fault. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't. It was the right thing to do. It was his duty. He wasn't responsible for the aftermath. He had no clue Holmes would do that. It wasn't his fault.
It couldn't be his fault.
-x-
Sally transferred. She took a position across town; now they crossed paths only on occasion. They'd stopped sleeping together long ago – he couldn't deal with the guilt of an affair and the guilt of a suicide.
His wife had moved out a few months ago. He never told her about the affair. He'd become distant, stayed out or kept quiet when he stayed in. "It's like you're a completely different person and you refuse to let me in. You won't even let me try to understand." He watched her pack and closed the door quietly behind her.
Every day he stepped into work he heard Holmes's voice. Not mocking him or his intelligence. No. It asked him how he could have let his happen, how he could still come into the Yard and not think of what he'd done. But he did think of it. He thought of it more than he liked, more than he should have. The voice started up when he clocked in and became only minutely quieter when he clocked out. So he left and took up working at a store down the street from his flat.
He dropped about a stone; he couldn't stomach food and couldn't gather an appetite. His clothes hung off his shoulders as if they were hangers, cloth falling shapeless on his body. He grew his beard out again, didn't care to exert the effort of shaving. Proper hygiene was a chore. He was a mess. No wonder everyone left; he would leave himself if he could.
-x-
He'd visited the gravesite, the slick black stone with 'Sherlock Holmes' engraved upon it. He'd gone to the cemetery many times, but only managed to stand in front of the gravestone once. Either Watson was there – and Anderson had done a perfect job avoiding him after he'd been chinned – or he couldn't muster the courage to actually face the cost of his actions.
Staring at the gravestone, he opened and closed his mouth multiple times before he could say something. It wasn't eloquent, it wasn't well-thought out, but it would have to do.
"I just wanted you to learn a lesson. You just needed to stop being such an annoying prick. You weren't supposed to kill yourself." He sped through it, words tumbling out of his mouth, feeling daft and awkward on his tongue. Dropping an evidence bag with a note saying 'I'm sorry' in it, he shoved his hands into his pockets and walked away.
It was on his way home from the cemetery that he saw it: "I Believe in Sherlock Holmes" sprayed across a wall in bright yellow paint. He started noticing it more and more throughout the city. One day, walking back from the corner store, he caught sight of someone tagging it. They saw him too and bolted down the alley. Anderson chased them, dropping his bag along the way.
"Wait!"
The graffiti artist looked back at Anderson, then to the fence getting closer and closer. They leapt, latching onto the chain-link. They were almost to the top when Anderson managed to grab their pants leg.
"I'm not a cop."
The artist turned to Anderson and spat. "Whadd'ya want then?"
Wiping saliva from his eye, Anderson said, "I Believe in Sherlock Holmes, what is it? What does it mean?"
"You got a problem reading? It means exactly what it says. He won't a fake." They shook Anderson loose and dropped from the fence, tossing their hood back to reveal dark hair and equally dark eyeliner. "Why're you so interested?"
"I… I, uh, I knew him."
"For real?"
"We weren't friends or anything; we worked together, down at the Yard."
"Were you one of the ones thought he was fakin' it?"
The question hung heavy in the air around Anderson. He swallowed hard. "I used to."
"Used to?"
"I'm not so sure anymore."
Looking Anderson up and down, the artist finally nodded at him. "I'm Jaimie. There's more of us; we meet up time to time. Come by sometime…"
"Anderson. You can call me Anderson."
"Aight. See you 'round then, Anderson," Jaimie said, starting back up the fence.
"Wait, how will I know when these meetings are?"
Jaimie pulled out a heavily decorated mobile phone. "Duh, Twitter. And for fuck's sake go get your groceries, man."
Anderson nodded. "Thank you, Jaimie. I'll be seeing you then."
"Whatever."
-x-
He wasn't completely tech illiterate and Twitter isn't terribly complex, so figuring it all out only took a few minutes. He was surprised to find so many people participating in conversations using #IBelieveInSherlockHolmes (or #IBiSH for short) and #SherlockLives. They weren't just from London either. Sherlock's fans spanned the globe, corner to corner. There were clear leaders, people with thousands of followers who were near constantly conversing with other 'Sherlockians' as they called themselves.
He only scrolled through the feed for a few minutes before making an account of his own. "Anderson13" – extremely simple but he couldn't think of anything more creative at the moment. He clicked the little blue bird that said 'Follow' on some of the larger #IBiSH contributors, one of which he recognized as Jaimie. He wished he had something to contribute, but instead he just watched other people's tweets pop up on his screen. Downloading the twitter app to his phone, he shut his laptop and went to bed.
The next day he looked more in depth at the IBiSH community. Forums, blogs, lengthy comments and debates on all things Sherlock. There was an entire network of people devoted to this one man. Anderson almost felt sick looking at how much they admired Sherlock. Not because they idolized a man he once hated, but because they idolized a man he drove to suicide. He had no place here. In their eyes he would be Judas. Plus, there was nothing he could do for them anyway…
Well I just read about this crime in Romania. It was classic Sherlock. It looked like a perfect murder but suddenly the police found a connection that absolutely no normal person could've thought of. It has to be him.
His fingers typed a response of their own volition.
Details? I used to work with Sherlock down at the Yard before he disappeared. I might be able to help recognize his work patterns. –A
That's it. This was what he could do. He doubted that any of his past coworkers were on these forums. No one else on here knew how Sherlock worked, had seen him in action. This was how he could help.
-x-
It was a few weeks after he met Jaimie that he attended one of the Sherlockian meetings. He stood outside a rundown building, looking down at his phone for the address to double check. This was the place, even though it seemed fit for a drug lab rather than a meeting place for a group made up mostly of teenagers and young adults. The part of him that held on to his time at the Yard resisted each step he took closer to the building. This couldn't be legal nor sanitary.
Following the faint din of voices, he eventually happened upon a small circle of people – all much younger than him – chattering and look down at phones, whether it be theirs or someone else's. Clearing his throat, every head snapped up from their LED screens and spun towards him.
"And who are you? My maths professor?"
Anderson looked down at his attire. An argyle sweater over a collared shirt, khaki trousers that barely fit him anymore, and loafers. Add his beard and he had to admit that he did have the uptight instructor look down.
"No I—"
Someone stood up and Anderson immediately recognized them as Jaimie. They walked over to Anderson and nudged him – harder than Anderson would have liked – and laughed. "This is the guy I was telling you about. The dude who worked with Sherlock!"
"Whoa!"
"No fucking way."
"You knew him?"
"Wait a second. Are you 'A' that keeps posting? Helping us track him?"
He stood with his arms stiff in front of him, left hand clenching his right wrist in a nervous death grip, Anderson shrugged then nodded. "Yes. That's me. I figured that I'd be useful since I saw how he did things. I know his patterns I suppose. Smarter than he gave me credit for."
One girl's face lit up. "This is exactly what we need! Up until now we've just had speculations and wild guess. Now we can be more certain!"
Anderson smiled. "I'm glad I can help. Also, if you'd like, you can meet in my apartment and not in this mess. You're all welcome there."
Jaimie knocked Anderson in the arm again. "Bitchin."
-x-
Anderson's sitting room soon became a headquarters for the Sherlock Lives community. They'd started holding regularly scheduled weekly meetings instead of the "I dunno whenever" get-togethers they'd been passing off as meetings. It gave Anderson a reason to keep his kitchen stocked and his flat clean. Silly as it sounded, it gave him purpose again.
Clearing space in the middle of the floor, he rolled open a world map. He looked up from the map to observe the walls of his sitting room. One was already covered in articles and possible leads, the other was taken up by windows. Turning to the wall on his right, he moved from the map and reached over a set of cabinets to remove a painting given to him by Sally.
"Looks like it'll fit."
Picking up a box of tacks in one hand and the map in the other, Anderson clambered onto of the shelf. Pinning the top left corner, he shuffled right, occasionally tripping on the drooping parts of the map. Just as he was about to tack the right corner to the wall, he felt the map sag and saw the left corner has come undone. He sighed, pinned the right corner, and moved towards the left only to have the entire map fall down on him halfway across.
"Anderson? You there? It's Jaimie, c'mon and lemme in."
Climbing down, Anderson walked over to the intercom and buzzed Jaimie in.
"You're here early," Anderson said.
Jaimie shrugged. "I was over here already and had nowhere else to be. That okay?"
"No it's fine. Great actually. Come over here and help me pin this to the wall."
Jaimie followed Anderson onto the shelf and took a tack. "We'll probably need one in the middle too."
"I was planning on that, just couldn't get either side to stay up long enough."
Once the map was secured to the wall, Anderson and Jaimie stepped back and smiled.
"Looks great, man," Jaimie said and held out a fist. Anderson look at it for a moment before curling up his own hand and tapping it to Jaimie's.
"Thank you. I've got a pocket map as well. If we ever establish a pattern I'll show it to a friend… well former coworker really down at the Yard. He was the DI who got in the most trouble for using Sherlock's assistance."
"Sounds awesome," Jaimie said, falling into one of the many chairs that now filled Anderson's sitting room.
-x-
The rest of the group liked the idea of the map and the idea of presenting it to Lestrade (name omitted when Anderson mentioned it) as much as Jaimie had. As time was winding down, Jaimie stood up and prompted the other members to do so. Anderson looked on, confused.
"So uh, since you've been a great help and all, we all wanted to get you something with it being Christmas and whatever. I mean they're all pretty dumb but we hope you like them."
Anderson found himself being presented with various gifts, many of them related to Sherlock in some way: an I Believe in Sherlock bracelet, a Sherlock Lives t-shirt, the same stupid hat everyone the yard had bought Sherlock, and then cookies that read 'Thank You' in icing. Finally, Jaimie pulled something out of their coat and handed it to Anderson.
"We all pitched in to get this since everything else was pretty cheap since we made them. It's not much, but you're a pretty cool dude for and old guy so… yeah."
Anderson found a fifty pound giftcard in his hand, the packaging signed by as many people who could fit their names. Tears brimming in his eyes, he smiled wide – the most genuine smile he had managed since Sherlock's suicide. He'd spent last Christmas like he had spent most of the past year – wrecked with guilt and alone. This… this was so much better. Slipping the bracelet past his hand and securing the deerstalker on his head, Anderson got up and hugged each of them.
"Thank you. Thank you so much."
-x-
Over time the printed news articles took over one wall while the map garnered more and more X's in places they believed Sherlock to have been. Soon they noticed a distinct pattern: each instance of Sherlock was getting closer and closer to London. He had to let Lestrade know about this. If Lestrade would even talk to him, that is.
He'd called Lestrade and asked if they could talk; Lestrade sounded skeptical, but agreed nonetheless. They met in a pub not far from Anderson's flat. Anderson waited at a table in the corner, fidgeting with his map and papers.
"So, what is it you wanted to talk about?" Lestrade asked as he sat down.
"I have something to show you."
"Don't tell me it's about—"
Anderson unfolded the map and pointed to the furthest X. "Just hear me out."
Lestrade wasn't convinced. Anderson detailed a sighting in New Delhi. "It's so obviously him, if you know how to spot the signs."
And, he might note, it wasn't his idea to title them, it was a group idea to keep Watson's trend going. He just happened to also like it.
An occurrence in Hamburg. "There's not one else it could be do you not see?
"I see that you lost a good job fantasizing about a dead man coming back to life and I know why you want that to happen… but it's never gonna." Lestrade gave him the same look of pity he'd seen so often as of late. That tone of 'I'm sorry' and 'what has happened to you?' It made Anderson sick. "You take care, okay?"
Anderson paid him little mind and looked back at his map. Hamburg, Amsterdam, Brussels. "He's getting closer. It's like he's coming back."
Anderson knew Lestrade didn't believe him. Anderson knew coming into this that he probably wouldn't convince him. Lestrade still thought Anderson was off his rocker, most people did.
But Anderson knew he was right. He had to be. Sherlock Holmes was still alive and he would return.