I walk into the average little kitchen, a scented candle put on just before everyone went to bed was lit. Vanilla. It was dark, however, the persistent red from the lit candle shone on the person who made the loud bang. Really, to me, it wasn't a question of who did it, but rather, a question of why they'd be up at this time.
Quiet, my attempt to keep everyone else in the timed home asleep, I walk to him. Sherlock's eyes were widened, and open. His chest rapidly shadowing from his heavy breathing, caused by fear, though... Sherlock's rarely afraid. Silly things do scare him, however. With his slightly sweaty head contorting his shoulder as he laid it on the countertop, I stoop a quick look at his hands. They're curled in, one elbow bent and the other not.
I whisper, "Sherlock, it's me. What did you do?"
"I- I thought I knew this place better." Sherlock shakes out. Usually, his try at whispering is dulled by his deep and naturally roaring vocals, now, I've heard him thousand times quieter. He tilts his head on the counter more upwards, back twisting just a bit more as he hopped.
"You've got to answer me, Sherlock." I look over the kitchen once more, seeing if I missed something. And of course, I did. The table looks shooken previously, not in center of the small space. My theory is he kicked it, waking me up.
Eyes drearily tossing around, he sighs, "I stubbed my toe, that's all."
My hands go to lift him to a forced stand as he speaks, looking down when he mentioned the foot. I expected a scrap or bruise to be formed, but not blood pooled around his bare foot and soaking my own sock. It was luke warm. "Let me just hop you to the restroom, 'kay? Wash it off and get you to bed."
Blindly, I hold a small amount of Sherlock's weight as we make way through the dark house. Luckily, the bathroom is infront of my guestroom which I kept the door open and light on. "Here." I say, leading him into the dark bathroom as he flinched away from the bedroom light.
Since the accident, the only thing that has kept Sherlock from going mad is the doctor's promise that surgery would fix everything. That once he's healed completely, just one snip and sew will make these weeks and possibly months, alright.
In the bathroom, I walk around the lanky genius to open and turn on the linen closet light. It's too late for anything too blaring, anyway. Next, I lead Sherlock to stand in the cold tub, pouring the water warm over his red foot.
"What were you after in there?" I ask, hoping to ease the tension. I was just washing my former flatmates foot in his parents home while my wife was reading some novel.
"Sometimes, I can still see, John. Sometimes, my delusional mind gets on track again. I woke up because I knew it was one of those rare times where I could see. And I was headed for my phone, to text a long waited message." He tells me this like it were his own story book, and I was his eager listening child.
"I- I know that after that fog jacked up your sight, it made you unhappy. But you know it's not permanent, Sherlock, so please just stop doing this before you actually get hurt." The water began running clear, so I turn it off, shaking my hand of fallen water and walking to the linens.
I hear him retaliate loudly with his overreactive mind, but I hear him stumbling louder. As fast as I can without slipping on the tile, I caught him. He's always trying to be independent with this, but things like blindly exiting a tub could seriously bust his head in.
"I'm not a six year old. How many times do I have to prove this to you?" Whimpering this out, he moves his lanking arms from mine, unhunching his back to stand. I harden, "When you stop dropping from buildings! Stop being shot! When you solve a case without having to kill with your own hands!" My mind runs to marry back in my room, and I hope I wasn't shouting too loud.
"That's why I need to send out that text, John. I have her waiting, and if I lose her, I'll lose it myself."
I realize, then, he was talking about Irene Adler. She should be dead. But everyone should be dead at this point. Moriarty, Sherlock, me, Sherlock again, even my daughter. "Irene, what did she do?" I hand him the towel in urgence, ready to run and grab that damned phone any minute. If she meant that much to him, then she mattered to me too.
"She's on the run from assassins again... With... A four year old." Lacking the capable breath to say it smoothly, he tosses the towel down, steps his foot on it and clasps my shoulder. "A child, John." Teetering with the closeness our faces had progressed, I take a step back. "Yes. I mean, what's the child doing? Is it hers? Does she have information on their parents? Why is it important?" If the child now meant that much to him, then apparently it meant equally as much to me.
"We've gotten those hints that Moriarty is alive, and I know I assured you that he was dead. But I believe there's someone out there carrying out his name." He stumbles past me, on edge clearly, going for what I think is the phone again.
"Sherlock!" I hurry to him, and see Mary eyeing my from the bedroom, sitting on the bed, nursing our daughter. She doesn't look pleased.
"Sherlock, where is your phone and I'll send the text." I efficiently stop him with a hand to the arm, turning him. "Just tell me where and what to type."
Fighting his urge to flee sightlessly away, I watch him closely, "In the living area, on the coffee table." But I find i'm not just watching him, I'm really looking. There's the faint yellow glow of the room's light radiating his face orange, his hair solid dark brown. He looks years younger, and sleepier. Like a teenager who has been running into trouble all night and coming home before his parents wake up.
"I'll get it, stay here. Just be thinking of what you want me to send." I tap his arm again, heading through the dark house, hunting for the small black phone. When I get it, I nearly walk into a table myself, though i'm lucky enough not to. In the hall I don't see Sherlock, it takes me a good second to see he has made his way back in the kitchen, sitting pin-straight in a chair.
"You better be lucky you have me to mess around with stuff like this at three in the morning." I sit infront of him, fiddling the phone in my hands. "I didn't ask you to stay, you know, there's no chain around your ankle to stay." Sherlock and his everso real intellect makes a point.
"No, no you're right. There's not. But you are kind of the chain, don't you think? And it's not just because of the-" I want to say it, but I can't. He can though, apparently, "Blindness? I really question that sometimes, but back to the phone, can I see it?" His hand stretches out and reaches for mine, wanting the phone, wanting to do everything on his own. "Uh, no you can't. Literally, you can't see it. Just, just tell me what to tell her and i'll send it. No questions, promise." With the phone out of his reach, I find Irene's coded name in the untracked contacts.
"No questions? Really?"
"Yes, promise you."
He shifts in his seat, folding his hands together. "Just put, 'don't tell him the truth'." He's rephrased it, I know of it, you can tell by the way he took his time. "Don't tell who?" I ask.
"You said no questions, John. I thought you'd be more of a man of your word. Send that, then 'Meet me there'." His loud fingers tap on the wooden table surface, then he stands. "Done. Now... Wait, meet you there? You? Unless your planning to develope eyesight soon, i'm not allowing you on any case work." Standing with him, I try to direct him to his room, the one he's refusing to go to.
"Sure, I can't. And you'd probably try and stop me, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, I really would."
He 'hmms' and laughs, moving his feet slowly, drudging to his room. "Fine with me."
I don't question again, not yet. I finally get him back to bed, I finally have him put away like the porceline doll he is. Mary isn't happy, but she isn't angry. She understands what I have to do sometimes for Sherlock, and she accepts it as best as an ex-assassin can.
The next night, the last night we're staying in this country-side trap with Sherlock's parents, I wake up again. With Sherlock's phone buzzing and beeping, i'm suprised nobody else was awake. I find it setting by itself on the kitchen table, lighting up and staying lit up.
I go to it, squinting at the harsh light, 'The first was a blessing, the soon to be second is a curse'
I reread the text a few times, taking it in with what little I was told the night before. But I got nothing out of it. The only person I knew who would is... Sherlock... "Sherlock?" I look around first, maybe he's already up. "Sherlock, really." I pace then, down the halls, to his room, to his... empty... bed. "He fucking left!" I kick at the bed in brief anger, but I can only really blame myself.
He has those tendencies to go off alone, blind, sometimes shot, sometimes to commit suicide. He does it more than i'd like.
I twist from my rage to a small roaring sound, and faint lights out the window moving across the walls.
It's a car, and it's probably for me, Sherlock probably has Mycroft watching again. In a hurry I throw on yesterday's pants and shirt, slipping on my shoes with haste to go outside. It's cold too, great, but not snowing, actually great.
"You're really going after her!" I say to the window rolling down, a sterned Sherlock appearing. "I was hoping we'd be going after her. You do have my phone, don't you?" His hand reaches out the window, palm facing up. Sighing, I plop it in his hand, "Who's driving?" I try to look past the tinted windows. "Mycroft's Chauffeur, now get in before it's too late." The window rolls back up, and i'm expected to get in. Which I do.
It's toasty inside. "Now tell me who the kid is, or tell me what her text meant. Tell me something." I speak to the usually cold person. "What text?" His head turns in curiosity. "She said the first was a blessing and the soon to be second is a curse." As I tell him, I saw an expression of delight, then betrayal develope on his face.
The vehicle begins driving at a constantly accelerated pace, determined and jerking around bends and turns. "I'm possibly going to shock you in under thirty seconds, are you ready, John?" His hand finds a grip on the seat as the car turns dramatically.
"Never. Tell me."
His eyelids shut tight, and he breaths deep.
"Years ago, I saved Irene from terrorists. She thanked me heavily, and I accepted. Presently, she's told me she is once again on the run from Moriarty, this time with a child. For you to understand completely, John, I'll tell you the child is an outrageous genius with bad social habits, some tried to diagnose him with Aspergers, but it's unnecessary. And now, I find out Irene is once again expecting. Maybe she's on the run from Moriarty catching them, or maybe he's already had her."
He breaths again before finishing, "All in all, i'm supposed to be able to fix it all."
My head begins to hurt at this information, the smell of my own confusion is high and strong. Sherlock's a father, that's what he had said. Irene, a gay woman with strange tendencies, has birthed Sherlock the Sociopath's baby, and is pregnant with now a psychopath's kin.
I want to throw up at the thought, the sad thought, but my stomach is solid and heavy. "I- I-" I try to speak.
"Shh, John, I see her up the road." His hand brushes my arm to quiet me, his head perked sideways. I take a moment as we begin slowing down, to fully feel the effect of what Sherlock said. He SAW Irene and the boy, with his EYES.
It was another one of those rare occasions he gets to feel himself again.
"I see her, too." My mouth turns into a big smile, ecstatic for some reason. And Irene is standing tall, costumed in a torn-at-the-hem black dress, the curly haird boy hanging onto her hand facing the car's bright headlights.
The car stops just as Irene picks up her boy and sprints inside, forcing herself the the middle of Sherlock and I before I could even comprehend the door opening and closing. She's barefoot, shivering, the showings of a belly forming, but alive nonetheless.
The car u-turns, going back for the house, for safety.
And a good minute passes of absorbing what has happened before she speaks. "I told him." And it's so fucking odd to hear a voice after five years.
"What!? Wait- Wai-" Sherlock is in distress, his lit up eyes dying down and beginning to look past everything he tries so desparetely to see. "You told him. You told-"
The boy is quiet, I didn't realize he was even there until his body began shivering against me. I gently put an arm around him in the tight space.
"His name is Reed at the moment."
Sherlock squeaks a retaliation, "Reed?"
"Yes, Reed! We do have to change his name every week, it's not like we coud actually stick with William like I'd hoped." It becomes couples therapy in a matter of seconds. The boy looking up to me with familiar eyes, dismissing the arguing and going straight to calculating me.
"William?" Sherlock questions her, getting a bit quieter now. "You did say it was your name. It was appropriate at the time." My eyes are drawn to Irene as her hand cups Sherlock's cheek, expressing some fondness she has to him.
They go quiet.
The car finally pulls back up to the house, but all the front lights inside have been turned on. I thought nothing of it until Sherlock told everyone to be quiet and stay. He gets out, and I do too. I'm done with him doing things alone, also, my wife was inside.
"Wait!" I watch the blind man stop at the gate, his head turns my direction. "Thank god you got the hint, John, you know i'm blind. Idiot." He's been sweating, his smile in return is nervous. He's uneasy. "Lets go, shall we?" I say as I swing the gate open.
"The game is on."
Though, the game is forever and tedious. One minute you defeat the bad guy, the next you find out your ally is the enemy.
You walk into your friend's parents house. You see a villain named Moriarty who has died years ago, waving a gun around those parents. You see your wife, standing there, leaning against the wall with a knife in the hand she never writes with. Then, you hear her talk. You hear her Russian accent that is clearly her native one. And the shock of hearing her speak in that tongue shocks you, so the words don't phase you. Her saying that it was silly to think that baby girl was ever yours, it doesn't phase you. The fact that Sherlock Holmes, your best friend who happens to be blind, is stunned in the face of it.
And it just doesn't matter, your heart just can't help but thinking of the woman and boy back outside.
Sherlock was played by The Woman. She tricked him the best she could. Now i'm being played by a woman. Mary has tricked me twice, three times. She made me think I was a father. But she doesn't understand that I am a father.
"What do you want?"
The man I never wanted to see or hear again speaks, Moriarty (the man who I can't stand) speaks. "Oh, not much. Not much at all. I want you to meet Seb, Sebatian you know as Mary. And I want you to say goodbye to Seb, say goodbye!" He sings it, smiling as he brings up his gun and rockets a bullet through the neck of the mother of my child, the assassin, my wife, AGRA... Seb.
"Mary!"
...
Author's Note: Um, my friend who used to write stories won't be doing them any longer. I'm not new to fanfic, but i'm a new writer. Sorry if it's no good, I write when convenient. Comment if you like.