Title: In Proportion to Hope
Author: kenzimone
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,300
Summary: "I gave my word," Sherlock says, as if that explains it all, and perhaps it does.
Note: Unbeta'd and un-Britpicked, because I wanted to get this posted before His Last Vow airs. In short, all mistakes are mine. I wrote this after watching The Sign of Three because I adore Mary, but after Sherlock's reveal at the end of the episode (and taking into account ACD canon) I'm braced and ready for absolute and utter heartbreak come HLV. So this is probably some kind of therapy. Hope you enjoy.
Greg steps through the steel doors, letting them swing closed behind him, and hesitates. The air in the morgue is sickly sweet and when he breathes it in the smell lingers, the taste sour on his tongue and bitter in the back of his mouth. He swallows but the tang remains, along with the memory of coarse brick beneath the palms of his hands and the burning of his throat as he empties his stomach against the side of a featureless building.
Beneath the fluorescent lights Sherlock Holmes is a dark shadow against a backdrop of stainless steel and white tiles. He doesn't acknowledge Greg's approach, his attention fixed firmly on the table in front of him, and Greg tries not to let his steps falter. He keeps his gaze focused on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling and the blinding brightness of the lights overhead, and lets his eyes rove the room, touching upon clean surfaces and darkened corners, anywhere but on the table; it's the absolute focal point of morgue, magnetic in its draw and horrific in its contents, but he resists, holds off until the very last moment, until he's right next to it and can't possibly ignore it any longer, and then there's nothing to do but lower his eyes and look.
"God," he breathes, even when he knows exactly what to expect.
God, Mary.
Petite and fair and lovely, and so very, very still. Her shoulders are bare, the sheet pulled up to cover her chest in a macabre attempt at modesty, but Greg can still see the closed, raw incisions curving down from each shoulder, disappearing beneath the cloth and trailing towards her suddenly flat belly. He can remember placing his hands there, once, feeling the movement and life within, the way the motion prompted a crooked smile on Mary Watson's face, and on the table next to this one there is another sheet, draped over something small and fragile laid out on the metal surface, and a black rage fills Greg's stomach, stronger and colder than he knows how to handle, a roaring and thrashing thing that threatens to eat him alive until the bottom suddenly drops out and he chokes on nothing and thinks he might either wither into dust or be sick again.
"Sherlock," he says, mouth dry, because this stillness is gruesome and the silence even more so. He leans heavily against the table, feels the cold of the steel bite through cloth of his trousers. "Sherlock?"
"John is... resting," Sherlock says at last, voice as firmly detached as always. His eyes flick up to meet Greg's for the first time since he entered, and Greg tries very hard not to think about John. John, sitting on the pavement in front of the flat, face white and eyes closed and body shaking so hard that he might just break apart at the seams, and by his side, fretfully looming, Sherlock, wearing an expression shockingly unfamiliar to his features, and he'd known, Greg had known...
Sherlock exhales, dropping his gaze once more and raising steepled fingers to rest against his chin. "He won't regain consciousness for several more hours," he continues. "There is no need for me to stand vigil by his bedside."
And here? Greg wants to ask, but Sherlock's voice is flat and hushed, and brokers no argument.
Greg holds his tongue and studies the detective instead, as best as he can, because Sherlock's head is bowed forward so that Greg can't see his eyes, hidden somewhere behind the wild curls, and he's suddenly worried, he realizes. Worried in a numb sort of way, shocked still and detached from feeling just like he sometimes imagines Sherlock to be. He pushes away from the table and circles the end of it, trying not to look down at Mary's face, the pallor of her face and the brush of blonde lashes against cold cheeks and the way the corners of her lips pull up in a slight, soft smile even in death, and then he reaches out to gently touch Sherlock's arm.
Sherlock sways with the contact, a tall sapling caught in a strong wind, and there's an emptiness taking hold in Greg's chest, a vacuum that threatens to devour everything warm and happy and leave behind nothing but cold steel and white lights and the smell of antiseptics and decay.
"Whoever did this," Greg says, finding his voice and tightening his grip on Sherlock. "We'll find him. I swear, we will find him. He will not get away with this."
Sherlock blinks, and it's a dismissal. Greg drops his grip. From this angle he can follow the detective's gaze, locked unflinchingly on the hollow at the base of Mary's throat, on the absence of her pulse, and Greg's worked with Sherlock for years now, has seen him whirl through crime scene after crime scene, always in motion, animate and forceful, smelling and tasting and touching and deducing, but now he is still and silent and he wonders if he's ever felt anything as wrong as this.
Greg breathes in, a rush of stale air between his lips, and knows that Sherlock saw John off to the hospital with a shock blanket draped over his shoulders and a sedative numbing his grief. Knows that the detective stalked the flat, observed the scene, and left alongside the coroner, accompanying Mary to St. Bart's morgue; knows that Sherlock has most likely deduced all there is to deduce, knows exactly the hows and whens and wheres and whys, knows all there is to know, everything of importance, exactly what steps to take next, and yet here he is, standing guard in the morgue. Still.
"Sherlock," Greg says, gently. "Tell me. Tell me who did this, and I'll–"
"No," Sherlock bites out, lips pressed into a thin line, and Greg knows that this can mean a thousand different things.
No, not yet.
No, not without John (never without John).
No, you do not factor into this.
No, they are ours to find.
No, once we are finished with them there will be no spoils left for you.
"Okay. Fine. You don't have to tell me yet, but let's go–"
"No!" Sherlock snarls, whirling to face Greg, and his face is taut and his eyes are dark in an uncharacteristic display of grief-pain-rage, and Greg almost recoils at the abruptness of it. Sherlock looks just as startled before he catches himself, features smoothing out, softening, and adds, in a gentler tone of voice, steady but for the minuscule sliver of a tremble that Greg only catches because he knows to look for it, "Not yet. John will not wake for another two hours. I will be there when he does. I will be there."
He makes sure to hold Greg's gaze as he says it, and Greg swallows against the tightness in his chest and gives a short nod.
"I gave my word," Sherlock says, as if that explains it all, and perhaps it does, because Greg suddenly feels tired, exhausted down into his bones. "That I would be there. 'Whatever it takes'."
"All right," Greg replies. "All right." He rocks forward, pushing past the detective and crushing thoughts of flowers and wine and dancing and laughter, lets the tiny fragments of memories litter the floor in his wake as he heads towards the exit.
The doors open easily by his touch, and he finds that the air in the corridor is warmer and smells fresher than in the morgue, the overhead lights tinted yellow instead of a clinical bluish white; the contrast makes him give an involuntary shiver as he steps through the invisible barrier, like stepping out of shadow and into sunlight.
And as the doors quietly swing closed he catches a glimpse of Sherlock's reflection in the glass; a brief flash of a slim silhouette, hands tucked beneath the chin of a bowed head, gaze centred once again, vigil resumed, lone but for the two bodies on the tables.