AN: I wrote this on a whim late at night. I'm sorry if any of the details of The Fall (or anything else) are portrayed incorrectly. Let's just call it artistic license. Also, I do not own Sherlock. Just thought I'd put that out there.
I know I should probably stick to humor, as that really is my forte, but this is as humorous as it gets when you listen to The National and Alt-J late at night.
Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy this little fic. I love feedback, positive or negative, so please leave a review if you can (anyway, this is the first fic I've posted since my birthday last week, and late presents are cool too).
John Watson was not the first one to paint "I believe in Sherlock Holmes" on the brick walls of a London alleyway, or the boxcar of a freight train.
Nor was he the second, the third, or the last.
In fact, since the graffiti incident during the Blind Banker case, John had made a point of avoiding anything involving spray-paint. He was too busy trying to put his life back together, anyway, and writing Sherlock's name all across London would hardly pass in his therapist's book as coping.
No, the person who unintentionally started a worldwide, underground movement was but a girl, quiet and unassuming. No one thought anything of the occasional streak of paint running down her hand or smear on her right index finger, because no one really thought anything of her.
And she really didn't mind. That was the whole point of the graffiti anyway, to be heard and not seen.
It was funny, because those five words over brick, cement, and steel were heard far more clearly than any that had ever passed her lips.
If asked, she wouldn't say why she started it. But at the very least, she would say that it had a good deal less to do with Sherlock Holmes than it probably should have.
Sure, she read about Sherlock Holmes. Sometimes her dad would leave the paper at the kitchen counter, and she'd make time to read it if she saw his face or his name featured some place, though she would never go terribly out of the way. She knew girls who giggled over his picture, swooning at his eyes and cheekbones. She could understand why, even if she didn't feel inclined to do the same.
But then the Richard Brook scandal hit, and suddenly his face was everywhere.
And then a week passed, and something new happened, and Sherlock Holmes just vanished, as if he was never even there at all.
She had seen "The Fall". That's what they called it in all the papers, and that's what she couldn't help but call it in her head-The Fall. Capital T, Capital F.
Well, to say she saw it wouldn't be accurate, really.
She always walked past St. Bart's after classes on her way to her mam's office. That day was no exception.
Usually she just put in her earphones and blocked out the world, letting her feet do their job. They had walked the route enough times to follow it on instinct.
But the sight of a man on the edge of the roof caught her attention, even in her half-aware state. The first thing she felt was surprise-not because he was on the roof, but because he was Sherlock Holmes, and she had never seen him in person before.
It is always strange, seeing someone you know from the telly or the papers in real life. They're always somehow larger than life, yet less than you imagined.
Then, of course, she realized that he was on the roof. That he was teetering on the edge. That he was spreading out his arms. That he was-
And she ran. Faster than she ever had, in no particular direction but away. It thrummed in her head like a pulse. Away. Away. Away. Got to get away. Over and over and over again. Even after the thud of the body on the pavement and the banshee shrieks and the one feeling voice that cut through them all, the remorseful plea of "he's my friend" that worked its way to her ears despite her best attempts, scratching at her heart.
She ran until she couldn't run any more, until her gasping breaths gave her lungs no relief and she could feel the blood pumping sharply through her fingers.
She dragged herself into one of the side streets that her mother always warned her against as a little girl and slipped down the wall into a puddle. She had tried to lean against the brick for support, but her knees buckled nonetheless.
It was only when she looked down in the reflection of a puddle that she realized some of the streams running down her face were tears and not sweat. She wiped them away, but let herself cry for a while.
And then her eyes dried, and her breathing calmed, and she picked herself up and left.
She had no idea where she was. And while she would probably be able to locate herself if she looked around a little bit (or better yet, used her phone), she just used her pocket money to get a taxi home.
The unwatched television in the kitchen, loudly playing the evening news, featured a false-blonde reporter detailing Sherlock Holmes' fall from grace in a voice too solemn to be genuine.
She turned it off even though she was headed upstairs.
She couldn't bring herself to read the papers.
Not that she even had to. It was on the telly, in the streets, plastered across the internet. It permeated the air, and she had no choice but to breathe it in with the oxygen.
It seemed that, in the case of Sherlock Holmes, the media abandoned one of the few rules on the mostly ignored honor code that was usually heeded: don't speak ill of the dead. This time, they spoke little else.
A little more than a week later, like an explosion or a storm or anything else that starts violently, it ended just as suddenly, with just as little warning.
Her nightmares didn't though. Every night she was either falling or watching from the pavement, and every night it ended in the only way it could.
Splat.
She didn't seek help, though she knew she should have. And she had wanted to, but when she tried to put words to the idea they never fit right, so she said nothing at all.
Anyway, it was a hurt within herself, like an emotional hemorrhage, and she was the only one who could make it right. Her and her alone.
And, one night, a little more than two weeks after The Fall, when she woke up at 3:10 AM, her heart where her stomach should be and her stomach in her throat, just like all the nights before, something clicked.
There was a faint poetry to it. He had fallen at 3:10 PM, and now, when she had woken at the same in the AM, the pieces finally clicked together.
She didn't change from her pajamas, didn't dare look in a mirror (if she didn't see her hair looking like a rat's nest, then it didn't look like one. Or, at least, she could pretend as much). She just tiptoed down the stairs in the dark, skipping the creaky one and side-stepping the cat. Creeping into the garage, she found the half-empty can of yellow spray paint, left over from some school project of her brother's, and tested it on the side of a cardboard box full of gardening tools. It worked.
Her heart started to beat a little bit faster as she walked back through the house to the much quieter front door. She had never done anything like this before. She had never even wanted to.
She walked out into the still air of that dead time between late evening and early morning, all her senses on high and her mind alert, everything so exaggeratedly real that it felt like a dream.
She walked nearly five blocks before she found the perfect space, wide and empty and open.
Glancing both ways one last time, she shook the can and wrote out the five simple words that had come to her in the night.
Her hand shook, and therefore so did the letters, but in the end they looked like they were meant to. Honest. Words that every man deserved.
Because she didn't know Sherlock Holmes. She didn't know whether he was a fraud, though she found it difficult to believe he was anything short of a genius regardless. She believed that he had saved people, caught criminals, found the answers that grieving families and friends needed to heal. But she couldn't know for sure, and she really didn't care. Because Sherlock Holmes was a man, with a heart and a mind and a soul, just like her and everyone else.
What did fraud truly mean, anyway? It was such a terrible word. He told some lies, maybe, sold himself for more than he was. But who hadn't done that? It didn't make him less human, but more. Because the Sherlock Holmes she read about in the papers, back when he was still in the media's good graces, didn't seem real. He was so cold and hard and sharp, like steel.
But then she had seen him, standing on a roof, and before she could identify him as Sherlock Holmes she could identify him as a man. A scared, torn human being whose legs shook as he stood, poised to fall.
She believed in that man, more than she ever had the handsome and mysterious detective accoladed in the papers.
She believed in Sherlock Holmes.
And as she walked back home, the can of spray paint tucked in against her side, she felt light and free and delightfully empty.
Sneaking back into her room, the front door locked and the paint returned to its place, a victorious smile creeped onto her face.
She crawled back into bed and quickly succumbed to sleep.
One last time, she dreamed of falling.
Only this time, hitting the ground was not the end.
This time, she stood back up.
-Fin-