To everyone: thank you for the support and the follows for this story! As for the one anon, if you don't like it/where I'm going with it, don't read it! Simple! Though I do appreciate you pointing out the things you did I have kind of already solved the problems you brought up. But it ruins the story (and is poor storytelling) to lay all of that out in the first chapter. I was already leery with what I did provide in the first chapter and in this one as well.
For a quick answer, though, Sherlock can still be a fantastic detective and the god of death because he isn't the one out killing people and deciding they die. The fates decide who dies, and Mrs. Hudson (his Thanatos) marks the actual people for death. Sherlock can still solve the crimes because of these delegations of power. I hope this chapter helps you out, too, and that if you still don't like the story after reading this chapter that you'll save yourself from my writing by not reading more of it.
Again, thanks for the support, everyone!
Enjoy!
John was out trying to get a job, while Mrs. Hudson came up and made tea for them. She kept to her own business—sorting out who was supposed to die, who had close calls, the like—except for when she felt that there was more than a bit of murder going on. She didn't like murder, and so Sherlock's new hobby of being a detective suited her sensibilities. He went about finding the people who were doing the murdering. For instance she was just mentioning to him about the mysterious deaths of a banker and a journalist when a representative of the Jaria Diamond client arrived at the flat.
This was Sherlock's problem, and so she winked herself invisible and awaited the inevitable. Sherlock let the man have a good run for his money—really, the fact that the sword had managed to hit anything was an accomplishment when fighting Hades, even if Hades himself hadn't been hit. He wondered, as he delivered the last few blows, what the man would've done had he known he was battling someone who was essentially immortal. Very few mortal blows would actually kill one of the gods—gods, really, the term was inane—and this man hadn't stood a chance even though he'd been armed to the teeth.
Mrs. Hudson had clucked at him as she sat once again in John's chair. Sherlock rolled his eyes and collapsed back into his seat.
"You didn't have to kill him, Sherlock."
"You've known he was on your list for five days, you didn't have to drag it out."
"Oh, it's not my fault what the Fates spin out, Sherlock, and you know it. This man was going to die on or around this day, at or around this time, and by the hand of an immortal. And besides," her smile was quite warm but he barely felt it, "it is good to see how well the rich man can fight." Sherlock smiled bitterly and then settled further into his chair, pursing his lips and steepling his fingers. Mrs. Hudson finished her tea and then called up her boys—she had had the extreme fortune of having both her children grow up as seeds.
She and Grandmere had trained the two as Acherons, bearers of the dead to the underworld. Usually a court only had one person in a given position, but no one argued with Mrs. Hudson and certainly no one had ever argued with Grandmere. Or so he'd heard. Sherlock had never met Grandmere, the woman having passed away a hundred and fifty years before his birth. Back then the family had been in France, and only at her death had they made the move to England. Their departure had apparently sparked the French Revolution—the new Hades, with a newer Thanatos, had been a bit overzealous for the first fifty years or so of their reigns.
Mrs. Hudson and her sons—and the dearly departed Jaria representative—had only just made their exit when John returned in a hell of a mood. Sherlock didn't actually smile, but he did internally. His landlady's affection as well as John's fire were barely reaching him now but perhaps this case of Mrs. Hudson's dead banker and journalist would warm him a bit. One never knew when one might meet a damsel in distress, after all.
Molly's cat had woken her up early today. The fuzzy black cat was half-grown, gifted as a kitten by her then-dying father. Flip was only eight weeks old when her father had adopted him, apparently on one of his last independent journeys away from the house. She'd taken the tiny cat from his cool hands, tears in her eyes and a laugh choking out of her mouth. Her dad—Old Toby to all of his friends down at the pub—had smiled through his own tears at her and had taken a picture. He'd only lived another few months, encouraging her to follow her desires and dreams all while petting the little cat. The three of them had been inseparable until the end.
Flip was an intrepid little animal—much like that man who'd started showing up on her shifts at the morgue. Sherlock Holmes—he'd been around for years, but had been more of a phantom rumor to Molly than anything real—the consulting detective. He wasn't fooling anyone, especially not Molly—she'd looked up consulting detectives and there was no such job. He'd made it up, and was trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes with it too.
Molly did cut him a little slack: at least he was good at his job, even if it was made up. He'd left his mobile number—call, don't text—with her if any interesting deaths showed up in her morgue.
Lestrade's the only detective who'll work with me, but not every case of his needs my help. I get bored.
The detective—who Molly vaguely remembered from when he occasionally handled suspicious deaths which came into the hospital morgue—was apparently not allowed to actually call Sherlock on cases. Their interactions had to be done person or by text or not happen at all. Molly had only found this out a few weeks ago, actually, when she and the man had been chatting as she looked for a file for him. Something about a toxicology report maybe, she couldn't remember really.
"You know that Sherlock Holmes bloke, yeah?"
"He comes around a bit, yes."
"Bloody man is on me about what is the next case, I need a weird case, are you stuck anywhere with the Ludwig case? But—and get this," Lestrade managed around the apple he was munching on, "he won't call me. Won't even answer if I dare call him. Text or face, I have to see it." Molly made the appropriately pitying comments after that, and kept it to herself that Sherlock had told her just the opposite. He wanted to hear her descriptions, a phone call being faster to communicate than asking him to come over and look or trying to fit all of her observations into a text. It did make her feel a bit special, but only a bit.
Mostly she hoped she didn't see the man for a little while—he'd hurt her pride the last time they'd seen each other, completely sidestepping her asking him out. Doctor Stamford had told her to let it go, that the detective hadn't meant anything by it. Molly wasn't going to let him off that easily though. She was a human being and deserved respect as much as anyone else—just because stupid Sherlock Holmes thought he was better than everyone didn't mean he necessarily was. He was just a man, like any other. The next time she saw him she wouldn't make a big deal of it, but she'd make it clear he would have to treat her better if he wanted access to the labs during her shifts. Just a teensy bit of effort was all she was after.
Flip snaked around her ankles for most of the morning and she was glad she hadn't decided to rename him or something stupid—like after Sherlock Holmes of all people. At least Flip paid attention to her—and that was what she wanted. She didn't want either the cat or the man to fall at her feet and worship the shoes on them, but a little respect and attention would be nice—the cherry on top. The cat's jade green eyes shut with pleasure as she petted him and scratched the top of his head—she could return a bit of affection with some herself, she wasn't cold-hearted by any means.
The day was normal and good. A couple elderly people in on cases of natural causes, a teenager caught up in a courier-bike wreck, and then a couple of suicides—one suspicious. Molly didn't call Sherlock, because the DI she brought up the suspicious one to had dismissed her concerns. This was just one of those times where she was the only one capable to notice anything suspicious—it would've been hard for him to shoot himself as claimed in the report, but it wasn't impossible—and had no one who'd listen to her. After the run-in with the DI she had paperwork, and she accidentally worked through what was her normal lunch-hour.
Molly curled up with a book in the lab, waiting for the caf to switch over to supper—she had learned a long time ago that if she missed the first bit of lunch it was better to just wait for supper. Besides, they had a nice pork loin planned on the month's menu for tonight and she liked pork. Sure it was cafeteria quality, but it was a fair sight better than making it at home—starving—after a long shift at work. Stamford said it was morbid that she liked pork—of all sorts—when her job was to slice up the bodies of the dead. On her braver days, Molly would joke that it kept her in practice to buy a whole roast and fix it up for a party.
There hadn't been many parties since her dad had passed away, but maybe that would change soon. There was that lovely black dress she'd worn to her cousin's reception, maybe that wouldn't look too bad on her at a get-together for cocktails sometime. It would actually look excellent, she decided as she picked up the tray just inside the caf and headed for the line. Molly was halfway through a mental guestlist when there was a tap on her shoulder.
"What are you thinking—the pork or the pasta?"
"Oh it's you!" Sherlock smiled, his face looking exactly like Flip's did before the kitten knocked a dish from a table or something. Molly tensed up just a little—she still had to give Sherlock a bit of a wake-up call in regards to how he had to treat her from now on. Maybe not respect, but at least an attempt at civility would be kind. Sherlock though had dropped the smile and looked like he was trying to come up with small-talk—he really ought to stick to being a consulting detective, as 'master of conversation' he was not.
It was probably better that she try and see someone else, though, because it wouldn't ever work between them. Sherlock was exciting, and fun, but at some point she had to realize the facts of the matter. People changed and were happy for it when they wanted to change, and no one could make someone change—she couldn't 'save' Sherlock or 'change' him into a better man. He was the man he was at the end of the day, and she was the woman she was at the end of the day. Molly needed someone to watch Glee with her and play with her cat while she made dinner, not someone who asked her to break the rules at the risk of her job, and that was that.
Jim had escaped by the skin of his teeth—stowed on a ferryboat from Cork. With nothing on his back but his clothes and nothing in his pockets but sopping lint, he made his way towards London—there lay the British Olympus, and also the cold court. As he gracefully avoided tourists and cast minor glamours on sheets of paper—just making them into tickets, harmless stuff really—Jim wondered how he ought to get into the good graces of Sherlock Holmes. The man cared nothing for foreign courts, keeping to himself and his duties, and wouldn't have heard of Jim's experience in Ireland. Sherlock Holmes was a good and proper Hades, who didn't mess about in affairs not his own—nice and detached from the world of humans from what he'd heard.
Unlike back home.
The boat he'd caught had been marked to sink—taking all souls. Had things been going well, he might have spirited himself to the docks sometime in the night and just breathed on the hull or the engine or whatever he'd felt like to bring the vessel down. But no—he had instead willed himself invisible and tried to stay out of the way of the small crew and the passengers of the ferry. There could be no hint of his having come this way, otherwise inquiries might be sent to London. He would send the ferry and the crew on their not-so-merry way when they reached English shores. He had no desire to carry his bad recommendation—undeserved and unflattering—to the Hades of London before he'd gotten the man's ear.
The man was a new Hades, and probably hadn't fully formed his court. So Holmes was therefore probably in need of an excellent Thanatos—word was Old Hudson had retired recently—and Jim knew at least one thing in this new life of his, a life on the run with next to nothing of comfort or convenience. What he knew was that Jim Moriarty was an excellent Thanatos.
Review?
