Mary takes care to hop over the stair that creaks but at this point it is mostly out of habit. Sherlock knows already that she is here. He always knows. He has probably known that she planned on coming even before she did.
She hears notes of Schumann's Violin Concerto drifting down into the hallway. She looks over her shoulder where Mrs. Hudson is standing at the foot of the stairs, her face scrunched up in worry. Mary shoots her a look that clearly asks: has he been like this the whole time?
Mrs. Hudson shrugs and nods at the same time. Mary squints and continues to walk up the stairs.
Shumann's notes drift down to meet her steps.
This last Concerto he had written at the height of Shumann's mental illness. He had written it towards the end, when his mind was folding in on itself with syphilis. His tongue paralyzed, his nerves disintegrating. This was the composition of a madman.
The music is mad too and for long stretches it seems to go nowhere at all. It seems to eat itself, drive itself to the edge of death.
It is the saddest piece of music ever written and to hear Sherlock play a madman's song is sadder still.
Mary pushes the door open without knocking. No need to announce her arrival when Sherlock knows perfectly well that she is there. The room is somehow greyer than she remembers it. It is as if the color has crept out of it and left it pale and ghostly.
The only thing that remains tragically and vividly alive in 221 B Baker Street is Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
Said monsieur is standing by the window and playing the saddest piece of music Mary has ever heard.
The sunlight that spotlights the tragic violinist is white instead of yellow. So white, white, white. White as Sherlock's pale skin. And there is dust in the light. So much dust.
There is dust everywhere she looks. Eloquent, Sherlock would say.
Dust: bits and pieces of humans-bits and pieces of John, Sherlock and Mary drifting in 221 B and dusting the surfaces.
White. White. Grdy.
There is too much white and gray in the room. Mary turns on one of the reading lamps and some yellow light bursts through the space.
Sherlock stops playing.
"That is rude."
He doesn't turn around.
"Keep playing," she says. "I'll make you some tea. When did you last eat?"
"Monday. What day is it today?"
"Wednesday. You'll east some toast."
"No."
"You will eat the toast."
Mary sets about to work in the kitchen. She takes out the nice china and the Earl Grey tea. She fishes out some cardamom and cinnamon from the back cabinet. She knows Sherlock loves the way she makes the tea. Honey, cinnamon, cardamom and milk.
As the electric kettle bubbles away, she rummages the cabinets for food. There is a packet of moldy bread, a jar of jam, some marmalade and stale biscuits.
In the fridge there is only a bag of sheep hearts, a carton of milk and a jar of pickles. Typical.
She opens the freezer and almost cries at the sight before her. There are series of Tupperware full of frozen food.
Neat stacks of Sherlock's favorite dishes lining the shelves.
All labeled in John's handwriting:
Your favorite lasagna. Please eat while we're on the honeymoon.
Pasta. EAT IT.
Chicken curry. PLEASE EAT.
Stir fry. I'll know if you don't eat while Mary and I are away.
She considers heating up the pasta but she feels that would pour salt on a fresh wound. She thinks the food will only read John John John if she sets it in front of Sherlock. So she fishes some frozen bread from the back of the freezer, defrosts it in the microwave (she knows she is ruining one of Sherlock's experiments when she fishes out a jar of human blood from the microwave but she doesn't care) and slathers jam and marmalade over it.
Shumann is still playing. Her heart constricts in her chest. Sherlock stop stop.
The kettle's just boiled.
She throws journals and books off the coffee table and onto the floor with one swooping motion and lays the tea and jam and marmalade sandwiches on the table.
"Sit down," she commands. He nods reluctantly and lowers his violin, moving to sit on the couch. She takes the bow and violin from him and starts to play Claire de Lune as he starts to pour tea. She plays better than he does. It is the only thing she is better at and she knows this is what he is thinking when he frowns at her.
For him the violin is a way to let out pent-up frustration, for her-a classically trained violinist-it was what she had wanted to do with her life when she was a teenager, until she had given that up to be an author.
She smiles brightly. "Oh don't be like that," she chuckles, plowing on with another Debussy piece as he frowns. "You could have been the best violinist and composer of this generation. You could have been the best anything of this generation if you put your mind to it but you never put more than a half-assed effort into anything that wasn't deduction. So you can't be upset that I'm better at playing Debussy, when you've never particularly tried to be good at the violin."
Sherlock doesn't speak. He pours the milky cinnamon-y substance into his cup over a strainer.
"But you still play beautifully. At the level of some professionals. What it must be like to be so good at everything without trying," Mary muses softly as she plays, perches on the arm of the chair opposite Sherlock's.
Sherlock is still silent. She pours some tea for her as well. He stirs two teaspoons of sugar into his cup.
"And I had to stop you from playing Sherlock. That Schumann piece is too sad to bear," she whispered.
He stirs in two teaspoons of sugar for her as well. They take their tea and coffee the same way.
In fact they are more similar to each other than they are to John in every way. And for a moment, Mary muses that from the outside, the portrait of them in this sitting room is a beautiful one. They make a handsome couple. She in her pale blue dress, playing the violin with her pale curls falling on her shoulder. He in his dark suit and his black curls, sipping the tea that smells like cardamom. Both of them with pale eyes and angles and cheekbones and wry smiles. Weren't they a lovely couple?
Alas, there was John.
"La fille aux cheveux de lin," Sherlock says.
"What?"
"What you're playing. Debussy's 'Girl with the Flaxen Hair'," Sherlock smiles as he stirs his tea and looks pointedly at Mary's own flaxen hair. "You, the beloved composition by the French prodigy. I, the crazed and forgotten concerto by a syphilis-ridden German. If I had any literary steak in me, I could write something on the subject. But you're a bestselling author Mary, why don't you write a short story about us?"
Mary sits the violin down.
"Eat," she commands sharply.
He looks her over as he takes a bite of toast.
"You finished your latest novel I see. Another bestseller?" Sherlock muses with a mouthful of toast.
"It's a decent book," Mary says.
Sherlock's eyes narrow. "Oh, no no. Not decent. It's the best you've written. You know it is."
She doesn't bother to ask how Sherlock knows this. She simply snorts and frowns.
"Sherlock. Eat your toast."
"Did he send you to make sure that I eat?"
Ah, so they were going to talk about John then?
"No. He doesn't talk about you," Mary tells him honestly, sips her tea. She stretches one leg onto the coffee table, lets the pale silk of her dress pool around her on the chair.
Sherlock nods, appreciating her honesty. "If you're here to yell about what happened at the wedding, save your breath. John has chastised me adequately for the both of you."
She sighs. "I'm not mad at you for that. I should have told him myself. My mistakes are not your fault."
"Aren't they though?"
Yes, yes, they are Sherlock. If you didn't love my husband, if my husband didn't love you, I would never have cheated on him.
"I came because I miss you love," she says affectionately. Sherlock stiffens at the endearment: love. It has slipped out of her mouth before she can help it. In the weeks of Sherlock's absence -it's been two months since the wedding, how has it been two months?- she has realized something that she hadn't in the two years of knowing Sherlock. He had come to resemble something like a friend to her.
After all, Mary has never been like the rest of John's friends, like Scotland Yard or the clients who run away in fright. She has never asked John what everyone else has: What do you see in him? Why are you friends with him?
No. Mary sees what John sees in Sherlock. He is smart and charming and funny and, if he chooses to be, an absolute blast to be around.
Mary looks at Sherlock and thinks only this: it is exceedingly easy to fall in love with this man.
They glare at each other silently. Sherlock finishes up a slice of toast hastily and jumps to his feet.
"Are you here to warn me away from your husband?" he says finally with a soft laugh.
"I'm here to beg you to come back," she says, choking up.
"No you're not. Why are you?"
"He's not the same without you." She is begging.
"Funny."
"I'm not the same without you either." She might as well drop to her knees.
"Oh please."
"We're not…we both need you. That's all we do Sherlock. We go about our days like a perfectly normal couple and all the while we are sitting there, both of us needing you. Him, because he's always needed you and me, because I need him to be…him again."
Sherlock goes perfectly still for several minutes. They both let the silence linger and stretch out. When he speaks again, his voice is strained.
"Just apologize to him. He will forgive you and everything will go back to normal. Please," she begs.
The corners of his lips form into one of those superior smirks.
"You think we haven't been speaking because I ruined your first attempt at matrimony?" he snorts. "You think we've been avoiding each other because he's still mad?"
"Why else then? Why else would he be so drawn in, so upset?"
He does not respond for several seconds.
"No reason Mary. No reason at all."
More silence stretches between them, like an elastic band being drawn taut from where he stands at the window to where she sits on the chair.
"I'm sorry you weren't there for the real wedding," she says. She means it.
"I don't care—"
"Fuck you," she yells, leaping to a stand, the teacup breaking into a million pieces at her feet. "Don't give me the sociopath bullshit. You care. You fucking held me as I cried."
He becomes stonier in the face of her emotions. "We don't talk about that night."
"You don't talk about that night. I'm going to talk about it," she says as she paces frantically around the living room. He is sitting in his chair like a statue. "You came to me looking torn to pieces and said you knew I had slept with Mike. Why had I done it? How could I do that to John? He loves you so much, can't you see? And you love him too, so why did you sleep with a half-brained publisher Mary when you have the best man in all of London worshipping your every step."
Her imitation of his clipped Oxbridge accent is passable.
"Mary," Sherlock warns, voice strained.
"I told you I did it because my boyfriend, the man I was in love with, was in love with you instead of being in love with me," Mary laughs hysterically.
"Stop. You don't know what you're talking about"
"And you said some really convincing things about how much John loves me. About all the ways in which you see him being in love with me," Mary says. "And then I cried and cried and you held me so beautifully as I did, that no one would ever believe that you're heartless again if they saw the way you held me that night."
"I'm an exceptionally good actor."
"No you really aren't," Mary teases, stepping closer to him. He is looking down at his hands. She puts a finger to his chin, tilts it up to look into her face. "Your eyes give it all away."
They are almost green now, his grey grey eyes. And she wishes she was a better person and could let John go, could erase the sadness in Sherlock's eyes. But she can't. She needs John, loves John. John loves her. She just needs John and Sherlock to be friends again. But no more. She can't give John away completely.
She lets go of his chin and brushes a hand over his cheek. He tenses and then softens under the touch. As if he has never been caressed before.
Oh, god, has he never been touched before? No, no time for this Mary.
"Please just tell me," she says breathlessly, only centimeters from his face. She realizes that there are suddenly tears in her eyes.
She hadn't planned on breaking but she couldn't keep it in any longer. She had never planned on telling him the truth but it seems inevitable now
"I'm here because I need to know. Please just tell me. When do you plan on taking him away? Could you just tell me if you are going to show up one day and ask him to come back to you? I am so-so tired of wondering every day if it's going to be the day you change your mind and I lose him."
Sherlock is wide-eyed and genuinely shocked.
"Mary, don't be ridiculous—"
She is screaming now. "No Sherlock. I'm tired of both of us pretending all the time that this isn't happening, that nothing is wrong. Even the idiots at Scotland Yard can see it, did you know? The look at the three of us and think what a joke."
Sherlock smiles slightly. "I'm quite used to their ridicule. It doesn't matter."
"Not at you, idiot. They aren't laughing at you. They're laughing at John because he is so obviously in love with a man whom they believe to be incapable of any form of romantic attachment."
Sherlock's eyes widen a fraction, stung by the words.
"Except that's not true. Of course it's not. They don't know you like I do. You're so madly in love with him. And he's yours Sherlock. He lives you and breathes you and loves you. Every time he speaks he is saying your name. So what I want to know is why he's married to me. I just want to know why I'm being allowed to keep him," she screams and throws him bodily against the wall.
He doesn't fight and she watches with satisfaction as his elegant limbs make a loud noise as they make contact with the wall.
"How long will I be allowed to keep him Sherlock? How long before you want him back? I'm just tired of wondering every day, how long we have left. I am tired of the fear that creeps up on me every time I hear the doorbell or the phone or his text alert, knowing that three little words from you—really any words from you will change my life."
Her fists make contacts with his chest and she punches against them again and again. Wanting to break. To hurt.
He is completely still, looking at he as if for the first time.
"He's yours Mary," he says earnestly. "He's yours. He's yours."
He chants it over and over as if in prayer.
"You've promised yourself that you'll never take him," she realizes as she studies his pained expression. "Oh my god. That's it. That's why you're not speaking. It's you! You won't have him. You've chosen now to be a martyr Sherlock? Of all times."
He looks like she is tearing his limbs from his body.
"I'm not. I'm not. You idiot, don't you see? I'm not being a hero. I'm being a coward. I wouldn't be able to give him anything resembling a normal relationship. He would grow to resent me. He would leave. Don't you see? I thought…I was stupid enough to believe that if I spoke at the wedding he'd come running back to me but I am not even capable of seeing when my actions might hurt him. I don't know how to love him Mary. I don't."
Again, silence. So much dust in the room, illuminated by the pale light.
They are surrounded by dust. Their skins floating in the air.
Mary holds Sherlock tightly against the wall. She doesn't want him to become dust.
"He does love you," he insists earnestly.
"He does love me," she sighs as she finally moves away from him. "But we aren't us without you Sherlock. It's like we don't know how to be us without you. Strange, isn't it? You've became a part of our relationship without us realizing it."
She makes for the door.
She has a sudden image, a day-dream, an elaborate one. She is cursed with having a writer's brain. A hundred little stories are always forming in her mind.
She sees the three of them in the flat she and John now share. It is dawn and they are just back from a case Sherlock has dragged them onto. She would brew coffee and make toast and eggs as John bandaged one of Sherlock's hands. It would have a deep gash on it from hand-to-hand combat with a bank robber who had a rather sharp knife handy. She would put heaps of food in front of them and kiss John on the cheek. "Love, make sure Sherlock eats. He hasn't eaten since Monday!" she would say.
"You idiot! Eat or I'll cut up your other hand to match." John would say and Sherlock would glare at her affectionately. She would give him a triumphant smile. Then John would push a plate in front of Sherlock and their hands would brush against each other as John shoved a fork in Sherlock's hand. They would pause and stare at each other with unspoken want.
Mary would see this as she was stirring in two teaspoons of sugar into Sherlock's coffee. It would make her sad as she stirred.
But then the moment would be gone and John would beam at her with love as she brought the coffee to the table.
"It's seven in the morning. No use sleeping at this point," she would sigh. "I'm going to take a bath."
She would rush out of the kitchen but linger by the door for a minute or two, struggling not to breathe or cry, listening.
Then she would hear it.
"Is there any reason you almost got yourself killed tonight?" John would say in a gruff voice.
"I knew you and Mary would find me. And I had the situation under control in any case," Sherlock would reassure him.
"Damn it Sherlock. There was no reason to chase after a bank robber on your own and unarmed!"
"That's my work John. The work is everything. You can't expect me to let criminals get away."
"All right. Yes. The work comes first. Can't the people who are about you come a close second? Can you bloody call for back-up for once in your life? Can you not run after murderous thieves on your own?"
There would be a long stretch of silence.
"Is there anything I can do to make you care about staying alive?" John would say. This time his tone would be much huskier, much more tender. Mary would imagine him close to Sherlock. Were they about to kiss?
Mary would slink away to the end of the hall and turn on the water to draw a bath, to soak her fears in the searing heat of the tub until the water was lukewarm.
When she went back to the kitchen, they would be in the same seats they were in before. John would be working on his blog and Sherlock would be reading the paper while drinking his coffee and eating toast.
Something would be different. The air between them would be warmer, less tense.
Mary would be glad and anxious about the air at the same time. Then they would both look up at her as she took a seat and she would see the warmth in their eyes and know that she loved them both.
And neither she, nor John, nor Sherlock would be completely satisfied in the portrait she had painted. They would all want so much that they could not have.
They wouldn't be satisfied but they would be a happy little family.
She snaps out of her thoughts. She has to get him back. She has to fix this. They are meant to be together. All of them. She stops at the door.
He sees her pause.
"I wouldn't be able to love him the way…to give him…he deserves so much. I'm not," he insists.
She sighs, exasperated. "Well, he's miserable now without you. What do you propose we do about that?"
No response from him.
She looks over his shoulder. He is standing there in the dust, looking like he may very well be happier if he turned into little bits of skin.
"I am investigating a house-robbery in Cambridge tomorrow if you and John would care to join me. Old manuscripts stolen from a don's personal safe. No one else knew the safe combination and there is no sign of forced entry to the house. The police are quite out of their depth," Sherlock finally says.
Mary's face breaks into a ridiculously overjoyed grin.
"Oh Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock! Thank you. Thanks. Oh, yes. We will be here. What time are you leaving? On the eleven o'clock bus? We'll be here at ten thirty," she babbles happily. And then more softly: "He will be so happy to see you again."
He gives her a small smile and a nod, shoving his hands in his suit pockets, looking down at the floor.
He looks like a tragic hero all twisted and broken, standing there in the white and grey flat and the dust everywhere.
Dust. Dust. Dust. Bits and pieces of her and John and Sherlock wandering aimlessly in 221B.
She closes the door softly. As she floats down the stairs she hears him play The Girl with the Flaxen Hair.
She throws her head back and laughs softly.
Epilogue turned into a chapter. There will be a third chapter titled "Sherlock" and the three chapters "John", "Mary" and "Sherlock" will make the story.
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