My first story on FF, I might fumble... I still don't know where this story is going. I just need to get it out of my head to be able to concentrate on other projects.
I'm not a native English speaker and I'm not able to make the difference between british and american ways of speaking English, so please forgive me if you find too many "americanisms" in these, or if there are errors or wrongly used words. I'd be happy to correct them.
I don't own anything related to Sherlock TV show or Conan Doyle books. My original characters are my own.
The smell in the cave was unbearable. Sherlock followed Lestrade down the stairs, John just behind him. He looked disgusted, wrinkling his nose, but when he saw how John had put a handkerchief on his face, he smirked.
At last, they reached the bottom of the stairs and entered a low-ceiled room with a dirt floor. Bodies were lying around, having been here for at least a day, most likely two by the look of them, the doctor estimated. Blood had been drank by the earth but he could still see the dark marks around the corpses.
"Gun shot wounds," John stated after a quick examination.
Skerlock hadn't even given a close look.
"Pretty obvious crime, Lestrade, what am I doing here exactly?" he said, annoyed.
"It's not for the bodies I asked you to come," the officer said. "The reason is here."
He indicated a door on the other side of the room. Sherlock crossed the space in a few quick strides and stopped, transfixed on the doorstep to the next room. He then entered slowly, John on his heels but he stopped him with one hand.
"Stay away," Sherlock ordered without even looking at him.
Used to this treatment, John and Lestrade stayed on the doorstep of the cluttered room.
The end wall was covered with a huge map of London, and most of the walls were covered in notes, newspaper extracts, photographs. Code words and chemical formula were scribbled everywhere. In the center of the room, a huge table was taking almost the entire space and was also covered in all sorts of papers.
John had recognized the look on Sherlock's face. He was hooked. He was standing very still in the middle of the room, his eyes moving so fast it gave John the nausea. Then, he looked down and examined the floor. There wasn't any traces of blood here.
"Did you people entered here and messed up the evidences?" the consulting detective asked, looking at Lestrade and giving a dirty look at Donovan behind his shoulder. She scorned at him.
"No one came into that room when we discovered it. You're the first one to enter," Lestrade told him.
Satisfied, Sherlock smiled, he was cheerful now.
"Awesome. You might want to look for the man who was abducted here, most probably our chemist. He should still be alive as long as he can resist the torture and don't give his kidnappers what they want. He's about the same height as me, white, dark-brown haired, Slavic origins, he should be limping on his right leg, an old wound to the knee."
Lestrade gave his orders to his men, not bothering anymore to ask how Sherlock knew all that.
Skerlock turned around and continued to examine the floor. He turned around the table and frowned, looking at a small shabby closet in the corner. He was perplexed. It didn't fit.
"Those small footprints couldn't belong to a man, or even to a woman," he said aloud, taking to himself. "Maybe it was an animal, like a dog perhaps."
He approached the closet cautiously. The key was in the keyhole. It was locked. He listened carefully and heard a muffled noise inside. On the defensive, he opened the door, it creaked loudly.
"What?" asked John, ready to jump to his friend's help if needed. "What is it?"
Sherlock stared into the darkness. His piercing blue eyes met with a pair of terror-stricken light ones. A young child was crouched there, looking at him, her hands covering her mouth trying not to scream. She was the dirtiest human thing he had ever seen, and that was saying something. Her dark hair was caked with dust, her face grimed, the tears having drawn paler lines on her cheeks. Her nails where unkept, disgustingly black and some of them broken.
Transfixed, he continued his examination. Barefooted, the little girl was only wearing muddy and soiled jeans and a t-shirt which might have been white in another life. She was trembling out of cold as well as fear. Still standing, Sherlock continued his examination and growled in anger. He had seen the bruises all along her arms. The little girl started and whimpered on hearing him.
He crouched, and to his own surprise, he found himself extending his hand toward the child. She stayed motionless, still gazing at him. Through him even. He moved his fingers in front of her face and she didn't budge, her eyes fixed. She was blind.
"I'm a friend, my name is Sherlock," he said. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"
The girl started again and moaned.
"I'm a friend," he repeated cautiously, "you can trust me, I'm going to touch you now. Don't be afraid. It will be alright..."
He made a move to take her wrist in his hand, it was so tiny he was afraid he would break it if he touched it. But when his fingers closed around her arm, she began to scream hysterically and struggle to get out of his grip.
John ran into the room, his eyes wide in disbelief as he took in the small child hiding in the closet. Sherlock continued to wrestle with the little girl and eventually managed to get a good grab on her without getting bitten. He lifted her easily, she was light as a feather, clearly underfed. Now that she was out of the closet, she began to kick him with her feet. Not even trying to keep the disgust out of his face, he grasped her in his arm, holding her against his chest, to prevent the kicking.
"It's alright, it's alright," he kept repeating reassuringly in her ear in a low voice, ignoring John's incredulous stare. He shot him a poisonous look. Was he not allowed to show kindness?
After a minute or so of wrestling, she calmed down, shivering in his arms. He put her down and, removing his coat, he draped it around her frail shoulders. It was already dirty anyway. She stood there, gazing into the nothingness, listening hard.
"What's this?" asked Lestrange.
"A child obviously," Sherlock answered sarcastically. Lestrange shot him an annoyed look.
"She spent the last couple of days in this closet," said John who was inspecting the small space where the child was a moment ago. He retrieved a small empty bottle and wraps. "There was some food and water here."
The girl began shivering violently. John put a hand on her forehead but she jerked out of his reach, clinging to Sherlock.
"She has hypothermia, we need an ambulance. She is clearly malnourished and was abused," the doctor went on.
He looked outraged. Sherlock quite agreed with him. Why was that child kept in a cave with a bunch of terrorists? He looked around him. The answer was probably on these walls. He tried to detach himself from the child but failed. She just wouldn't let him go. Sighing and frowning, he picked her up again in his arms.
He began walking around the room, mumbling to himself and trying to make sense of the mayhem on the walls. He was in the middle of reading a formula when he noticed an error. It was a strange error, it looked deliberate but was very subtle. Mechanically, he read it out loud, correcting it in the process. Surprised, he sensed the girl tensing in his arms. He watched her carefully. She was very still, fighting the shivering and her clanking teeth, listening hard, looking more and more worried.
He turned his attention back to the formula but this time, he kept an eye on the girl while reading it. He found various mistakes and each time he corrected them, the girl tensed, while when he ignored them, she relaxed.
"What kind of chemical is it?" asked Lestrade.
"Some kind of poison," came Sherlock's calm answer, his eyes still riven on the child's face. When she heard his answer, she clearly winced. "I knew it!" he exclaimed loudly, making everyone jump. "You understood everything I said, didn't you?" he said to the girl, ignoring royally the puzzled looks he got from John and Lestrade. "What's your name, girl?"
The child blushed so hard it was visible under the grime.
"Latia," she rasped in a small voice barely audible.
"You're the one who found these formula, aren't you?" Sherlock went on.
"Come on Sherlock, what are you saying?" objected John, "She's barely six years old, seven at the most, how could she?"
Sherlock shot him a disdainful look. "I could at that age. You wouldn't understand."
He ignored the hurt expression on his friend's face, too preoccupied by the strange child in his arms. He continued, addressing Latia like the rest of the world didn't exist. "You made the mistakes on purpose. So they wouldn't be able to create this poison. That's why you've been beaten, they realised you were trying to deceive them. The men who came, they took your guardian, the one who wrote this, thinking he was the chemist." He indicated the notes on the wall. "He protected you by locking you into the closet. That means they didn't know you are behind the formula."
He looked up at Lestrade. "She must remain secret. No one must learn we found her. Is there a back door?"
The officer, despite his surprise, took the matter in his hands.
"There is a window upstairs, accessing a backyard. I can send a car..."
"No!" Sherlock cut him. "We'll take a cab. Make sure everything here is sent to Baker Street. Try not to mess it up too much..."
And without waiting for an answer or an objection, he rocketed out of the room, the child in his arms cradled in his coat, her face covered by the collar. John followed him closely. They easily found the window, the ground was several feet bellow. Without hesitating, Sherlock opened it with one hand and jumped. He crossed the little unkept garden and found a closed rusty door.
"Let me," said John behind him. He circled him and firmly pushed the door with his shoulder, which opened with a crash. He stepped aside, showing the way to Sherlock with one hand.
"I could have done that..." remarked Sherlock acidly.
"You could have hurt her."
"Of course not."
John gave him a look, the one saying "stop arguing and being a dick". Sherlock shrugged and leaded the way across the threshold. They were in a narrow alley perpendicular to the main road. They were hidden from view by rows of dustbins. They crouched and headed the other way, reaching the next street without being seen.
They had to walk for several minutes before finding a cab. Once inside, John asked to take a closer look at their young charge. During their walk, Latia had drifted into sleep. Sherlock opened the coat reluctantly, first because it was blocking most of the smell, and second, because he felt strangely protective of the child, possessive even. He watched John as he took her pulse and examined her more closely than he could back inside the cave. He really didn't like the worried expression his friend had just now.
"What?" Sherlock ended up asking, not able to contain his anxiety any longer.
"I don't like that sleep, she passed out from hypoglycaemia. She's dehydrated too. But thanks to your coat and your own body heat, she has recovered a nearly normal temperature."
John readjusted the coat around the girl. Sherlock clenched his teeth and didn't answer. He turned to the window, watching London streets slide alongside them, willing them to go faster. He really didn't like John's expression right now.
The doctor held her wrist the whole ride to St Barts.