AN: I'm sorry, guys. I was legit starting to write for my fic "Here" and I went to Tumblr to find some prompts to add for the (probably but not definitely) last chapter of the fic...
But I saw a reblog of a GIFset... and I got #SHOOKT because it was an Adlock AU Gifset (which is getting rarer and rarer)... then I got #SHOOKETH when I read it because it was RUDE AF... then I got #SHOOKENATED when I saw that I made that GIFset and I forgot about it...
Someone on Tumblr asked me to make a written form of a GIFset I made because the text can't be seen in smaller devices. I completely forgot to think about that. I was gonna write just a script form...
I was writing the script for others to read, but every time, I edit and edit slight details like: "Irene (looking down): _" and I wasn't satisfied so... yeah. Here you go.
Bolded parts are the text on the GIFset. Actually, I'm not gonna write additional dialogue so... the only verbal communication in the fic below are the text on the GIFset.
—oOo—
When the light turns red, the car is forced to a stop despite her aggressive need to arrive at their destination as quickly as possible.
Irene sighs, trying to look ahead—trying to stay calm as possible. Her hands tighten on the steering wheel at the effort to keep her breathing even. He doesn't need her to worry about him. Knowing his parents' personalities, Nero couldn't possibly want someone making a fuss over him.
But she can't help but look over her shoulder just to make sure her own flesh and blood—her son is okay. No, his situation is definitely not okay, but she hopes he's well enough to make it through the London traffic.
She could already see his sunken eyes, his sweaty forehead, and his still thin frame... too still.
"Nero..." she starts, trying not to panic by looking straight ahead, driving ahead since the stoplight had just turn green. "Nero, dear..." she starts again.
Nothing.
She tries to keep her eyes on the road but from the way the car had taken up speed, and the way her eyes would glide downwards just to have a glimpse of her son at the corner of her eye... she knows she's failing at keeping her emotions at bay.
"Nero, for goodness' sake, please," she begs.
"Don't worry. I'm not dead yet," he finally says, his eyes still closed as if it's physically impossible to open them. Irene finally lets out a shaky breath.
One thing Nero knows about his mother: she never begs.
He's traveled around the globe with his mother when he was a kid. They finally found some peace in America for quite some time with his mother working in theatre—living there for more than a decade.
However, after... the recent discovery, they go back to London—the place his mum considers as home... His mum always told him why she loves this place—a sort of longing in her voice, and he's always wondered why they never visited the country if she loved it so much. He never dared question her.
But he's not an idiot.
It took some time but he was able to manage to hack into some sites, some devices, and get into some files...
His mother is not Gertrude Irene Wolfe, is not born English who lives in the States, and is not just an actress in Broadway.
His mother is Irene Adler, an American who lived in the UK, and a dominatrix who nearly put the nation to its knees. A woman who had blackmailed people of high importance—one of them being a female member of the royal family! The photographs he discovered were not meant for a son of Irene Adler's to see...
Trying to find his father was a much more... difficult task. He only remembers bits and pieces of him in his earlier memories.
Sigerson Wolfe.
No record of him anywhere except for a probably fake birth certificate and the marriage record of Sigerson and Gertrude Wolfe. Since his mother's name is not actually Gertrude Wolfe, Nero's willing to bet his father's name is not Sigerson Wolfe either... One can only assume his parents making contact will only make things worse for all of them. Hence, the lack of contact.
That is, until, he suddenly appeared at the hospital in New York to bring both of them back to London for his recovery.
And he was right, of course.
His father is not Sigerson Wolfe, a Norwegian explorer who's been too preoccupied with research to visit his family.
No, his father is William Sherlock Scott Holmes, an English consulting detective who's been too preoccupied catching criminals to visit his family.
What will he find out next? That his cancer had been a lie or an excuse so his very important uncle, Mycroft Holmes—the British Government himself as his father told him, could pardon his brother's alias's wife to go back to England?
"The last word makes me think you expect to be," his mother says, bringing him back to reality as she looks down as she drives to glance at him at the corner of her eye.
What did he say before he got caught up with his own dysfunctional family?
Oh yes, I'm not dead yet, he said out loud.
"I don't have long, though," he says before he could stop himself, smiling humourlessly at his now pathetic life of hospitals, medicines, and beds.
"Don't talk like that," she scolds him, not for the first time, looking at him dead in the eye through the rear-view mirror.
Nero snorts. He really is a ball of sunshine and rainbows.
—oOo—
She watches as Nero gets rushed to the ER—doctors and nurses all around him. Trying to keep him alive, the voice in her head says.
Alive. How she hates that word now. It's as if the very thing is hard to keep, hard to maintain, difficult to obtain... To think that her son is trying hard to achieve something that shouldn't be difficult—especially for a son of a Holmes and an Adler—when he isn't being hunted down by a terrorist cell or a Napoleon of Crime.
Not wanting to stay still in one place, knowing she will explode from the resonating thoughts swirling in her head, she runs outside the hospital. She doesn't want to be with them—the waiting and worrying loved ones of patients.
She can't breathe in the atmosphere of another hospital with her son in there. Not now. Nero doesn't need her in there right now... but he needs her to be strong.
With a final sigh, she grabs her phone, pacing as she waits for him to pick up his phone.
—oOo—
He looks down at his phone, raising a brow in surprise at the name of the caller. He quickly brushes John and Lestrade off when they asked him what's wrong before excusing himself out of Lestrade's office for his own privacy.
"You've never called me before," he starts, hoping his voice doesn't show his anxiety at a sudden phone call rather than the usual text.
There is only one thing he could think of that would deem more important than revealing she was alive or telling him her last goodbye.
"It's Nero," the shaky voice on the other line says.
He could already feel the weight dropping on the pit of his stomach at the sound of distress in her voice and the confirmation of his fears.
"What is it? What's wrong? What happened?" he asks in his usual rapid-fire no-nonsense voice.
"He—he just..."
Not even when she tried to convince him, in her most vulnerable moment—when he condemned her to a life without her camera phone; not even when she had just nearly lost her life from a beheading in a terrorist cell in Karachi; not even when she told him she was pregnant with a boy after their last moments in Montenegro, did Irene Adler express as much fear as she just did.
He's always known she'd been as scared as he is since the day they found out. She was a mask of ice when the doctor told them, burying her emotions... for whom—Nero's, him, or herself?—he doesn't know.
Yet, at moments like these... Even he has to take deep breaths to mask his own emotions. She doesn't need to think about him, too.
"...collapsed," she finally manages to finish with a heavy breath. "I don't know what to do," he hears her murmur, and from the sound of it, just managing not to sob through the phone.
"Where are you now?" he asks her urgently and calmly which actually works.
"Bart's," she answers evenly and firmly, regaining parts of her strength back.
"Alright. I'm coming," he says with a final tone, trying to reassure her that she will not be alone with this worrying parent situation without trying to sound as worried and panicky as he actually feels.
Both his alias's wife and his son don't need him killing everyone in his path just to reach them. They have enough on their plate to worry about Sherlock Holmes being scared and tense.
Because right now, he is frozen as he stands in the middle of Scotland Yard, staring at nothing. Only John, asking him if he's alright and placing a hand on his shoulder, brings him back to what he needs to do.
He needs to go to his son.
"John, tell Lestrade I have to go," he tells John, jerking his head away from his own fears and worries to bring it back to the present.
He walks away, bumping anyone who comes his way and ignoring anyone who's looking at him oddly. It is bound to happen since it was rare for the people of Scotland Yard to see Sherlock Holmes so distraught.
"What's wrong?" he hears John ask him worriedly, running to catch up with him.
"It's Nero," he tells John in explanation, turning back slightly, trying not to think about the fact that he had just said the words exactly how Irene had said it a few moments before—shakily.
John takes a step back at the look on Sherlock's face as well as the implication that something bad had happened to his godson. Sherlock, on the other hand, has no time to think about the worried and fearful look on John's face as well, knowing how fond John is with Nero and vice versa.
He doesn't even think nor care about how the other officers start whispering amongst themselves at this Nero person and if he is the freak's boyfriend. He can't murder them now for their... their insensitive idiocy.
There is only one thing in mind: Nero. Nero. Nero.
His son with cancer.
—oOo—
Nero Hamish Wolfe. His son. His son with cancer. He can't stop thinking about the possibility of having to bury someone he had helped create and nurture in the beginning of his growth as a human being.
No parent should bury their children.
No. He can't let the thought haunt his mind, and yet the idea had been in his head ever since he was just informed of his son's condition.
Nero had been complaining about chest pains, fatigue, and difficulty in breathing, amongst other things Irene had observed but apparently Nero had never complained about because it wasn't a big deal, according to him. Very stubborn—like father, like son.
Conveniently, when Irene called him to update and inform him that Nero's being checked, he was just in the next city for a case by a client named Godfrey Norton, which he had just finished solving at the time.
He was there beside her when the doctors told her what they found.
Primary heart tumour.
He felt like he couldn't breathe at that moment. Both of them stayed still and silent whilst the doctors explained what it was, what will happen next, and how they should get more check-ups just to be sure.
It was said to be rare—a primary heart tumour. Of all people, his son gets it.
I will burn the heart out of you, Moriarty's voice echoes in his brain.
Nero's heart may be burning... but Sherlock's spirit had cracked. He didn't show it to Irene and Nero, though. He's the father of the Wolfe's—the wolves. He couldn't afford to show his weakness.
"It's gonna be fine."
He flinches at the sudden words from John. He looks down to see that he has been tapping impatiently on his right leg whilst his left leg keeps jumping up and down—a physical evidence of his anxiety.
"He'll be okay," John tries to reassure—Sherlock or himself? Neither knows.
Sherlock nods, stopping his tapping on both his fingers and leg as they go through the London traffic in a cab.
"Yes, he will," he replies, nodding confidently as if he didn't just think about the possibility of his own son's funeral.
—oOo—
Irene paces back and forth, sighing every once in a while, switching from placing her hands on her hips to placing her hands on the back of her neck.
He, on the other hand, settles by sitting on the ground with the table's leg behind him. He rests his elbows on his raised knees, one hand holding a stress ball to keep himself calm.
Finally, Irene stops pacing and places her hands on the table he is leaning on, and grabbing the first thing she sees so her hands could do something—the small white plastic box for microscope slides. He doesn't even tell her to put them down in case her shaky hands loosen their grip on it.
He shakes his head to stop observing her and turns his eyes at a distance, squeezing the stress ball.
She turns to look at him with one hand on her waist and the other waving carelessly even with the plastic box in her hand.
"We've been here for hours," she tells him.
Dear god is he aware of how long they've been waiting here.
"Our son is in the ER, fighting for his life, and we're here hiding in a lab," she tells the painful yet necessary obvious truth.
He notices how she said ER instead of A&E, reminding him of how long they had stayed in America and how much he had wasted his time alone rather than visiting them... how he detests the wasted opportunity of witnessing his son's puberty stage and only knowing him as a child and now as a near adult.
If he even makes it to eighteen, the whispers of Moriarty taunts his head.
Sherlock sighs. "I can't stand waiting areas," he admits quietly. "It reminds me that he's—"
"Yes, I know... I know," she interrupts him just as quietly, not wanting to hear the end of his sentence.
It reminds me that he's dying. It reminds me that I have to wait for a news I might either consider as an early present from a god I do not believe in or a news that might succeed in doing what Moriarty had always wanted to do—burn me: heart, mind, and soul, if there is one.
And she's right. She knows. She always knows.
From the corner of his eye, he could see her sagging her shoulders, a softness that had never been visible on her icy exterior before.
He sees an alliance with her—a feeling of equality more than he had ever felt with her before.
No one else amongst their circle of friends could understand what they're going through. Nero is a godson to John, Lestrade, Molly and Mrs Hudson; a best friend to Rosie; a nephew to Mycroft; and a grandson to Sherlock's parents.
But Nero is a son only to Sherlock and Irene.
Despite his aversion to wishes or anything akin to it, he can't help but feel the desperation and need for Nero to be okay after all this. Wishful thinking, he supposes, but even he can go through what any parent would do. Hope.
"Nero's strong. He'll pull through," he tells her firmly, looking up to look at her in the eye.
He doesn't tell her Nero could pull through. He doesn't tell her Nero might pull through. He doesn't tell her there is a possibility of Nero pulling through.
Because Nero will do it. He will.
"How can you be so sure he's gonna be okay?" she asks breathlessly, finally looking away from him, crossing her arms—a defensive pose he knows too well.
How can be be sure he's gonna be okay?
Nero is the son of Irene Adler, the woman twice dead who keeps coming back again and again and never goes down without a fight. Nero is the son of Sherlock Holmes, the man once dead who restarted his own heart by sheer will alone and has the durability of graphene.
"He's our son..."
He believes in his son. If anyone can make it through this, it's Nero. If he doesn't, the lives of Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes will die along with him.
"He has to be."
—oOo—
AN: Graphene is like the strongest material on earth rn... i think... idk lmao