The Girl Who Solved the Puzzle
"I need a favour."
"I don't do favours. Who is this?" The reply is accented to match my own, which doesn't surprise me.
"John Watson."
"Oh." She pauses. "What's the favour?" Her own accent breaks through now, which I know is an indication that she remembers me. That she trusts me.
"I need you to find someone."
There is a long pause this time. "I saw the news."
"No: no," I tell her hurriedly. "He's... He really... I saw him fall. Not him. I need you to find Rich Brook."
"You mean James Moriarty."
I smile. She knows. Of course she knows. She wouldn't have been taken in for a minute. "Yes."
"He's clever. It took some work to find out how he altered the records."
"He's not clever enough though, clearly."
"No." I can hear the smile in her voice. "I'll do it."
"Thanks."
"John... I'm sorry."
I don't trust myself to respond so instead I hang up.
The first time we met them it didn't go too well. The way she curled her lips around the words "consulting detective", she might as well have been swearing.
I glanced over at Sherlock and saw that dangerous look on his face: the dark one, the one that means trouble. The one that means he's going to show off just how talented he is and damn the consequences.
He took a deep breath and I braced myself.
"You are exceptionally bright and have a particular talent with technology, which is your chosen area of expertise and the one on which you spend most of your time. You dislike authority although your own, albeit unconventional, sense of morality is very strong. You had a troubled childhood; a mostly absent father who was abusive towards you and your mother. At least part of your adolescence was spent in some kind of children's home... No... In an institution, you feel wrongly, which is why you have such an issue with authority figures. This may also explain why you have difficulty forming relationships with people, although more likely this is because of your experience of your parents' relationship. Yet you have no problem having physical relationships. Why is that? Some sort of addiction to the chemicals released during orgasm or because you see it as a physical need; one that you have no problem fulfilling although it causes you some difficulties, particularly with your current -" he glanced at Mikael "– companion."
He expected her to ask how he knew all that. He was ready with the explanation.
It wasn't exactly a surprise to everyone else in the room when she punched him. What was unexpected was how professionally she did it and how hard Sherlock went down.
As she walked out, Mikael shot me an apologetic look, palms up, and followed her.
Sherlock was out cold.
Once I'd checked there was no permanent damage I chuckled to myself. He'd deserved that reaction so many times.
But, of all the people it could have been, it was the tiny, whip-thin girl with the black hair and the piercings.
After that there had been an uneasy truce. Sherlock refrained from analysing her and she didn't hit him again. The way he looked at her... Well. I saw that look again some time later. It was the way Irene Adler looked at him.
Sherlock solved the case, of course; he would have anyway, I'm sure, but having Lisbeth there made things quicker and more efficient. It would have been nice to have her on our side all the time, but she – and Sherlock – made it clear that this was a one time only deal. They are not the sort of people that share, or play well with others.
This was a shame, because Mikael was quite good company. His English wasn't as good as Lisbeth's back then, of course, but it was a hell of a lot better than my Swedish and more than enough to get by. When Sherlock and Lisbeth retired to their respective mind palaces, the truce holding in the flat for the moment, he and I went down the pub.
We were kindred spirits, the two of us, with our difficult friends. Although he was a journalist, there was something about him that suggested he had seen a lot more than he wanted to. Something of the soldier. Like me.
"They are quite the same, those two," he observed. It was our last day together: arrests had been made, the case solved, and their flight was booked for the following morning.
"Impossible to get on with, you mean?"
"Yes, and smart, but that's not what I mean." He shook his head. "Lisbeth researched him before we flew over: found out about his past, the drugs and all that. Addiction. She was quite... Well."
"As I recall, Sherlock wasn't exactly complimentary about her. Mrs. Hudson nearly dropped the biscuits when she saw what had happened." We both chuckled.
"Lisbeth is addicted though, too. Just as much as Sherlock. She likes the puzzles. Did you know she thinks she solved Fermat's Last Theorem?"
I remembered Sherlock telling me about Fermat and his work a while ago, when we were investigating the disappearance of a mathematician. "For god's sake don't tell him, will you."
He shrugged. "Oh, she had a bad hit to the head not long after and forgot. She hadn't written it down, of course."
"So she might not have solved it then." We looked at each other, Mikael and I, with mutual understanding. If she said she'd solved it, she'd solved it. Like Sherlock.
"Her other drugs are sex – like Sherlock said – and pain."
"Pain?"
"You noticed how she can throw a punch, right? She can box. She likes piercings, and tattoos, like you can see."
"She smokes, too."
He waved a hand, dismissively. "That's just something she does when she's bored. That doesn't count. Not for her."
I took a gulp of my pint, considering this. Sherlock was an addictive personality, it was true, but at least he wasn't into sex and pain. "Must be interesting to be in a relationship with her, then."
"Oh," he rolled his eyes, "We're not... Not like that. I would like to but... No. Not like you two."
I choked on the mouthful of beer that I'd been about to swallow. "Me and Sherlock? No. Nonono." I frowned. "You're not the first one to suggest it, but no."
Mikael looked at me, eyebrows raised. "You'd like it to be so, though, yes?"
"Look, Mikael. I'm not gay. He's not... Well, he's not anything, as far as I can tell."
"That's not a no, though, is it." He sighed. "We are too alike, you and I."
"I'm..." I struggled to form a sentence, gave up. "Can we change the subject?"
And then there was Moriarty. And Sherlock fell. And the world fractured into tiny pieces that had no meaning any more. Not for me.
I didn't know what to do. I still don't. The only thing that I can think of to do is to find Moriarty; to find him and expose what he's done and clear Sherlock's name. Beyond that... I don't know. I'm lost without him. I walk through each day in a dream. Going through the motions. Living, if you can call it that. I don't know what to do. I've thought of suicide. I've had my gun in my mouth so often that it's starting to taste like home.
I can't do it, though, not yet. I can't take the coward's way out. Not like he did. I can't take the coward's way out at least until I've tried my best to put things right. Cleared his name. Completed his work in that one small way. Then, maybe. I don't know.
Lisbeth will find Moriarty. She's the second smartest person I know.
The first, now, I suppose.
Lisbeth does me the courtesy of regular updates. This is unheard of, Mikael tells me.
I wonder if I could see Sherlock in her, if I look hard enough? I can't bear to try, though.
The genius and their handler. I miss that role. I miss it so much that it's like a hole in my chest. Like my heart and lungs have been ripped out and buried in the ground under a tombstone that says Sherlock Holmes. I haven't told anyone that I'm investigating Moriarty. They'd think I was mad. They'd think I'd lost it again, like I did those few months after Sherlock's funeral. A psychotic episode, they called it.
I don't want to be locked up like that again. For my own safety. Yeah, right. Lucky they didn't find my gun or I'd have been in prison, not a psych ward.
Lucky I was crazy, not stupid.
A few people visited when I was released; when I was deemed to no longer pose a danger to myself. When I'd pulled myself together and told the doctors what they wanted to hear. Molly, Lestrade, Mycroft. Even Harry, though she couldn't manage to be sober.
Why is everyone I've ever really cared about an addict?
They stopped visiting when I didn't bother to return their calls. They moved on. They probably thought I'd moved on.
I didn't tell them when I moved back into 221B.
Mrs. Hudson, like me, seems hollowed out. Being under the same roof helps that, somehow. Being near someone who cared about Sherlock, someone who believed in him. We prop each other up, prevent bits from flying off, stop each other from falling as we couldn't stop Sherlock. We take it in turns to make each other tea.
We exist. We keep on existing. Going through the motions.
Life goes on. Isn't that what they say? I continue living, if you can call it that. To me it just feels like the absence of death.
I wait for news of Moriarty.
What is the point in this? What am I hoping for?
I don't have an answer.
The updates from Lisbeth don't do much good, as it turns out: the trail stops on the day of Sherlock's death.
"There's nothing else? Are you sure there's nothing else?" I'm desperate, I'm begging, I'm not sorry. I know she and Mikael understand.
She doesn't answer. Of course she's sure.
She's the smartest person I know.
I call the papers and tell them I have evidence of Moriarty's identity but they're not interested. The readers don't care any more. It was too long ago. Never mind that a man's life was ruined. A great man's life. Corrections: page 7. Rich Brook was in fact master criminal James Moriarty. Moriarty was real. He fooled us all.
Nobody cares.
I sit with the gun in my mouth for a long time that night. It doesn't matter. I don't really sleep anyway. All sleep brings is nightmares, or, worse, dreams of Sherlock. His coat tails flying as he runs ahead of me. Eyes the colour of the ocean, focused miles away, deep in thought. The curve of his neck as leans over the microscope. The hollow above his top lip as he smiles at me. His long-fingered hands, checking me for injuries after the incident at the pool. Sometimes his face is covered in blood. I prefer those dreams, because when I wake up there is no doubt in my mind that he's dead.
Once, at that uncertain time between sleeping and waking, I called his name, sure that he was in the next room, playing the violin.
I sat with the gun in my mouth for a long time that day, too.
I know Mrs. Hudson would hate to find me, but I also know that she would understand.
Mikael and Lisbeth fly out to see me, to deliver their final report by hand. It's completely unnecessary, but I appreciate the gesture. Under other circumstances we could have been friends, I think. Me and Mikael, anyway. Lisbeth doesn't really have friends. Like someone else I knew, once.
They're staying in a nearby hotel, leaving in the morning. Mikael and I leave Lisbeth in the flat, working at something on her laptop, and go to the pub. As we say bye to her, she leans up and kisses Mikael on the cheek and I feel as if I've witnessed something incredibly intimate. I try not to think too hard about it as we leave.
Sitting down on the barstool, though, I flash back to the last time we were here. I imagine Sherlock back in the flat and feel pain in my chest that is almost unbearable.
"You're still mourning." His English has improved. My Swedish is still non-existent.
I nod.
"It's been a long time."
"It's been a few months," I correct him, more sharply than I mean to.
"It's been over a year." It's true, I realise, it has. Mikael looks older. There is more grey in his hair, more lines around his eyes. He gives me a measured look. "It hit you really hard." He doesn't say the word "death". It's funny, but nobody does when they're around me. It's as if the word itself has the power to shatter me into pieces, as if the event itself hasn't done that already. "He was more than a friend, after all?"
"Like you and Lisbeth?"
He smiles and I see a flash of genuine happiness there before he remembers who is in front of him and closes it off. "Yes."
"So you're in a relationship now?"
"Yes. Sort of. It's complicated. But I think she wants to be with me more than she doesn't want to be with me, which is a start." He looks thoughtful. "Kising me, in front of you... I'm sorry."
"Don't be." I don't mean it.
"It's the first time she's done that. Please don't be offended. I think, seeing you... Seeing what losing him has done to you..."
"She wants you to know that she's not going anywhere."
"Yes," he sighs, relieved that I understand. "Sorry."
I shrug. "It wouldn't be fair of me to begrudge other people their happiness."
"And yet you do." He chuckles. "It's ok."
We sit in silence for a few minutes, nursing our pints.
"You didn't answer my question."
"Question?"
"Was he more than a friend? Or, did you want him to be?"
It's my turn to sigh. "I'm not gay," I reply wearily.
"That wasn't the question. And you're still not answering."
"Bloody journalists," I say, and smile.
I still don't answer his question. I don't need to.
Sleep comes easily that night. I want to say it's the beer but I know it's not true. It's admitting to myself, finally, what I've probably known all along, even since the first moment I saw him in the lab. Sherlock Holmes. More than friends. Soulmates, maybe, though I know he'd have laughed at the idea. Sentiment.
I dream of him, of course I do. Pale skin and long limbs tangled in the bedsheets. Dark curls tousled with sweat. A crimson flower blooms on his scalp. Ribbons of red flow into impossibly beautiful patterns on the mattress. My hands are slick and red.
I wake up screaming.
It's two years to the day that he fell. Two years. Where have they gone? I have nothing to show for them. I'm older, I'm thinner, I have hollows under my eyes that make people recoil when they look me in the face. Good. I don't want to be looked at. I don't want to be seen by anyone else.
I can't go on any longer.
I wake up on that second anniversary – how can it be an anniversary, anniversaries are happy things – with more certainty than I've had in a long time. I dress myself in the suit I wore for his funeral and tuck my gun into the back of my waistband. There's plenty of room. Mrs. Hudson has done her best to feed me, but she can barely look after herself. Mrs. Hudson and I. Shipwrecked in 221B. Shipwrecked and alone, while all around us the sea of humanity goes on and can't understand why we are stuck on this island.
Well, I can't do this any more.
I plan to do it at the grave, but it seems like everyone who knew Sherlock – no, everyone who had met him, nobody knew him, not really – is visiting his headstone today. I recoil at the thought of Mycroft finding me and return home.
The gun slips easily into my mouth, the safety off. It feels like home: yes, yes it does. I'm coming home, Sherlock. I'm coming to you.
Someone rings the doorbell. I pause.
They ring again, insistently, and I lower the gun.
"Jesus, fuck."
I put the safety back on and stow it back in the drawer. To be continued, I think.
"Mrs. Hudson?"
No answer. I wonder if she's sleeping. She sleeps deeply, and often. She takes a lot of pills when we have tea together. These things are not unrelated.
I prepare my best "I'm fine" face for whoever it is that is there.
I'm not fine, though. I'm not. I haven't been fine since the day I saw the man I love jump to his death from the top of St. Barts. I am not and will never be fine again. I stow all these feelings inside me like the gun in the drawer, and I answer the door.
"I think I need a doctor."
Nothing has prepared me for this. I step back as if I've been burned; as if my whole body is on fire. I stumble; I fall backwards; I don't take my eyes off him. There is a strange, animal noise which I realise is coming from my throat.
Sherlock Holmes steps through the door and closes it behind him. The hair is wrong, the clothes are wrong, but it's definitely, unmistakeably him.
Sherlock Holmes. Dead man walking.
"Hello, John."
Sherlock Holmes offers me his hand and I take it so he can pull me up to standing.
I want to throw my arms around him and embrace him. I want to kiss him. I want to fucking kill him. As it is, I let him pull me up and then I punch him, or try to. He dodges it, grasping both my wrists.
Sherlock Holmes. The dead man.
"Really, John, I've already been shot and that's not going to help." There is a smile in his eyes that says he's pleased to see me, and a silent moment between us that goes on a fraction too long.
"Where are your shoes, John?"
"What?"
"Your shoes and socks."
"Why, are we going out?" I don't know why I'm saying this. It's like he's just come back from a morning out, not two fucking years of being dead. I know exactly where my shoes and socks are: I don't bother wearing them any more because there hardly seems any point when I know I'm going to be in the house all day. There particularly wasn't any point in wearing the ones I had on this morning for what I had planned. I'd have got blood all over them and then someone would have had to clean them before they put them back on my corpse to bury me, because I only have the one smart pair.
A pause again. It's too long. His elegant fingers are warm against my wrists.
"I've been shot," he says, perhaps in case I hadn't heard it before.
"You jumped off a building and you seem fine."
He cups his hands together, pressing my palms against each other between them. It feels like he's holding my world in there. "I need a doctor."
There are lots of doctors in the world. There are plenty whose silence could be bought with cold hard cash or secrets which a person of Sherlock's intelligence could extract. He has spent two years being dead, as far as everyone is concerned. Coming back here is a huge risk. I am not the only doctor in the world. I am not the only doctor in London. I am not even the only doctor in Baker Street.
Sherlock Holmes, deceased, does not need a doctor.
He needs me.
The gunshot wound is real enough, blooming out of his shoulder like the crimson flowers in my dreams. No organs damaged but he'll have an interesting scar. Nothing wrong with that. When I've finished extracting the bullet, my hands are slick and red, ribbons of blood flowing across the tiles in the kitchen. This feels familiar. I wonder if I'm dreaming. I can smell the blood too, though, here, which I never could in my dreams. The smell of it takes me back to the street in front of St. Bart's, hands pulling me back, Sherlock's body on the pavement in front of me.
I feel nauseous and step away.
"John? Are you okay?"
I shake my head. "No, Sherlock. I am pretty fucking far from okay."
I wash my hands then make him tea, pressing it into his cupped palms where my own hands were earlier. He has changed his clothes. He looks more like himself.
As I turn away he grabs the edge of my jumper. "John."
"No, Sherlock." I'm surprised at the anger in my voice. I feel detatched from it somehow. Like I'm not here. I must be dreaming. "You don't get to do this. You don't get to jump off a roof and make me think you're dead for two years and then walk back in here like nothing's happened. I can't even look at you." And yet I don't move.
"John," he says quietly.
"I can smell her on you. Irene."
"You can smell her on my clothes."
"Same thing."
"No, it isn't. We parted company some time ago."
"She's alive too, then. The two of you, off making a new life together." I hate the thought of it. I hate the thought of it far more than I have any right to or think I should. I should be happy that he's alive. Why aren't I happy?
"No. That wasn't what I was doing."
"Well what were you doing then?" I don't realise I'm shouting until my lungs hurt on that last word.
"Keeping you safe. That's what all of this has been. To keep you safe."
I walk away then, up to my bedroom and slam the door. When I close the door I realise how absurd I'm being. Two years – two years – I've spent wishing he was alive. Then I find out he is and I walk away.
Fuck.
The thought of him and Irene together makes my lungs itch with fury. She has been with him for two years. I thought he was dead.
He was doing it for me. The realisation hits me like ice water. What does that mean? To keep me safe? How has this kept me safe? I nearly killed myself.
I sit down on the bed, the breath knocked out of me. If I'd pulled that trigger...
Fuck.
Sherlock is alive.
It smells musty in here. I haven't slept in this room for months. I can't remember when I started sleeping in Sherlock's room, but I remember noticing that it no longer smelled of him.
Sherlock is alive.
He's alive and he's downstairs and what the hell am I doing up here?
There is a scream. Before I have time to think, I've run downstairs and gone straight for my gun; my hand is on it when I realise that it's Mrs. Hudson.
"What appears to be the matter. Mrs. Hudson?" Sherlock asks her, as if there is nothing wrong at all.
Her mouth opens and closes a few times, then – just like that – she's fixed. Mrs. Hudson is back. "I heard shouting and thought maybe John had started talking to himself again."
I see a tension in his jaw that wasn't there before. "No. No, it's just me," he says quietly.
"So it is." She smiles. She is pleased to see him, as if he's just returned from a stroll. "Would you boys like some tea?"
Sherlock returns her smile. "That would be delightful. Thank you."
Shutting the drawer, I sit down in the chair opposite him. Sherlock looks like he hasn't eaten in days. Sherlock. He's so thin. I knew who he was straight away but he's heavily disguised, his hair dyed black and a matching, neatly-trimmed goatee. His face is an odd shape; I think he's using cheek pads. As if he's read my mind, he reaches into his mouth and removes them. The way his fingers pass his lips stirs something inside me that I don't want to think about right now.
We are both silent until Mrs. Hudson returns with the tea. She's laid out a generous portion of biscuits too, I notice.
"Well," she says, "I'll leave you two boys to catch up." She glances back at us nervously as she leaves.
I can feel him looking at me, but I refuse to meet his eyes. "Your disguise isn't fooling anyone," I say as I put milk into each of our cups.
"Yes it is," he says. "Not you and Mrs. Hudson maybe. But everyone else."
He keeps looking at the biscuits. I want to tell him to have some, to eat the whole goddamn plate, the stupid, half-starved bastard. I don't though.
"So. Go on then. Catch me up." My voice could have cut glass. I'm surprised that the tea cups in front of me remain intact.
"I thought you would be pleased to see me."
"Pleased? I thought you were dead, Sherlock. I've been mourning you."
"It's been two years." He looks puzzled.
"Yes, well." I lean forward to pour his tea.
"It's not ready yet."
It takes me a second to realise that he's talking about the tea. "Oh, fuck off, Sherlock. Fuck off. You utter bastard." I slam down the teapot, stand up and begin pacing. "It's been two years." I'm repeating myself, as if that's going to make any difference. "You left me. You left -" my voice breaks and I stop.
He's looking at me. He doesn't know what to do, I can see. He can't cope with this much emotion in one room. In one person.
I clear my throat. "You left me. You tried to make me believe that you were a fraud – which I didn't by the way, not for a bloody second – and then you left me. I thought you were dead. The world doesn't make any sense without you in it, Sherlock, not for me. And then you turn up on my doorstep. Alive. And you don't even have the common decency to tell me why."
"But you're still here. Waiting. If you had really thought I was dead you would have moved on with your life as I expected you to. But you haven't."
"You expected me to move on?" I ask quietly.
"You're still here," he continues, unhearing, "In our flat, with my things, and you're waiting -"
"You expected me to move on."
"- so you must have known I was alive."
"You really have no idea, do you?"
The question stops him. No idea of what?"
"I haven't waited here because I knew you were alive. I watched you fall, Sherlock. I watched you die, or at least that's what I thought. I wanted it to be a trick. I wanted it to be a trick so much that I would have turned myself inside-out if I thought it would have made it true. But, no, I didn't know you were alive."
"Then why are you still here?"
"Because..." I take a breath, look up at the ceiling to blink back the tears that threaten to overwhelm me. "Because there was nothing else I could do. Not after you. There was never going to be anything else. There was never going to be anyone else."
His lips form a silent "oh".
I've said it now. There. A weight off my mind. It's changed nothing. "So tell me. What happened with Irene?"
"There was a problem."
I raise my eyebrows.
"She wasn't you."
My turn with a silent "oh" now, then. "How did you get shot?"
"Disposing of the last one."
"The last one?"
"The last one. The last of Moriarty's associates. The last one who might hurt you."
Oh god. That's what he's been doing all this time? Protecting me? I realise then and it's like a punch to the stomach. "You faked your own death to... Protect me?"
He nods. "Of course. You needed to believe it. I didn't think that it... I didn't think that you..."
I can't cope with seeing him lost for words like this so I redirect him. "Moriarty?"
"Is dead."
I know I look sceptical.
"He killed himself. Really. I checked."
I consider this. "It's over, then?"
"Yes. It's over."
He's watching me very carefully. I realise that I'm looking into his eyes. They're the colour of the ocean.
"I 'm sorry. John. I am sorry."
I don't think I've ever heard him apologise like that and I'm suddenly rather lost for words. Or, possibly, just lost. "Sherlock."
He stands up; takes the couple of steps across the only distance remaining between us; takes my hands in his. Before I have time to think about what's happening, I'm on my feet. "John." He presses my palms between his hands as he did earlier in the doorway, and this time there is no mistaking what it means.
I call Mikael that evening. "Hi."
"Hi, John." He sounds sleepy. "Do you know what time it is here?"
"I... Oh, shit, sorry." It's later than I thought. A lot later. I smile to myself. "Sherlock's back."
There is a slight pause as he wonders if he's heard me right. "What?"
"Sherlock's back. He's alive."
"Sherlock's alive," he says, to someone there with him. In bed with him. Lisbeth. It has to be. She says nothing, and I realise from her silence that she knows. She's always known. She worked it out. Of course she did. She's the second smartest person I know.
Not the smartest. Not any more. Sherlock is alive.
As I hang up the phone, he lifts my hand with his own and places it to his lips.
I hope he never lets it go.