It was the same every time he closed his eyes...
AN: Chapter two as promised, my loves! I hope you like it. Been playing with headcanons with this installment, folks, and I hope you like what's in store. xxHoney.
It was the same, always the same, every time he closed his eyes.
The pool, the lights, Moriarty and his crooked grin like cracked porcelain —
and Jane
dead, blank and staring, a bullet hole right between her eyes
or in the chest
that manic laugh ricocheting off the tiled walls.
"I will burn you. I will burn…the heart…out of you…"
And he was always too late to stop it. Of course, if it wasn't the snipers, his brain would torture him in coming up with a million different scenarios in which the explosion managed to kill her leaving him unharmed (typical ) as he watched fire and rubble consume her over and over and over until he managed to wake himself up, the sweat causing his cotton shirt to cling unpleasantly to his chest and back. It was like some bloody Sisyphean curse.
It was ironic, really, that something like this would jump start him into dreaming after nearly a decade of going without even a flicker. It was as if his defunct brain was playing catch up by cobbling together hundreds of these scenarios within the course of one night.
It was entirely loathsome.
Like now for instance, when he jolts awake on the sofa trembling, his ears still ringing from the phantom gunshots and explosions, and mentally he calculates the number twenty-three.
23.
Twenty-three ways in which Jane dies. Six from the snipers, three in a heart and head respectively; ten in the explosion; three found her drowned in the pool; three at Moriarty's own hand; and one — one at his own when he was made to shoot her himself. That was the most chilling of them all, in the end, and his stomach lurches at the memory.
The good thing about his genius, however, is the fact that even in the throes of a vivid nightmare, his logic is never too far away, so it only takes a second for Sherlock to shake off the oily dread clinging to his skin, and find footing in the tangible reality all around him. He flings himself up to a sitting position, scrubbing his hands through his tangled hair, giving it a sharp tug for good measure just to ground him.
His face is still sweaty, (loathsome; ridiculous) and he makes his way to the bathroom so he could dunk his head under the tap. The water is freezing, and sluices under the collar of his slightly rumpled dress shirt and down his back when he straightens up, waking him even further. He gasps, hands braced on either side of the wash basin, and he glares at his reflection in the mirror.
In a word, he looks dreadful.
Pale, severe face, dark circles, hair soaking wet and plastered to his forehead. He grimaces, and grabs his blue dressing gown from the back of the door, tugging it over his lanky frame. He slicks a hand through his curls, brushing the fringe off his forehead, and stomps back out towards the main room.
Distraction. He needs a distraction.
He pauses in the kitchen for a moment, eyes roaming over the contents of the table hoping to find something to do before he remembers all of his current experiments are in various points of stasis for now, and he was still waiting to hear back from Molly about that cirrhotic liver.
He stands in the middle of the sitting room, eyes tracking aimlessly over the walls where his collages are usually tacked when he is working on a case. There are still snippets of the Burks case taped to the mirror that Jane made him leave up so she can type up the details in the blog later. He wonders what the next latest and greatest title is going to be. The Cracked Chiropractor? Abhorrent Adjustment? M-alignment Murderer? (Preposterous.) He snorts despite himself, and deep down he admits that this whole title-lark is actually the tiniest bit entertaining. (But that is something he will take to his grave most earnestly if he can help it.)
He sighs morosely, gaze lighting on the skull on the mantle. The hollow eye-sockets stare back at him balefully as if sharing in the misery of his black mood.
"I don't know why you're so upset; you're the dead one, remember?" Sherlock says, and plucks the skull off of its perch. The skull glares back at him as if telling him to do something about their sorry states.
Sherlock curls his lip in a sneer. "I suppose I am made to placate you, then? Like usual." If the skull had eyelids, Sherlock is certain it would entertain him with a dull blink. "Quiet, you."
He makes his way over to the sofa, and flops down in a slouch that would have his mother cringing at its indignity, propping his feet up on the coffee table in a move that would most definitely earn him the title of 'philistine'. He puts the skull on the top of his knees and engages in a futile staring competition.
Wanna play chess?
"You were always terrible at chess."
Ah, I always let you win, mon ami.
"And your French accent is still appalling."
And you're still cracked, mate.
Sherlock wants to retort, when he realises that doing just that would prove him right. (And that the 'him' in question was an inanimate skull.) He sighs, frowning. It had been a long time since Sherlock had heard his voice inside his head. Since before Jane, anyway. The thought gives him pause.
He picks the skull up and cradles it in his hands for a moment before turning it over. His fingers trace around the hollow at the base (the foramen magnum) for a moment before dipping two of them inside the empty space. He finds what he is looking for, and after gripping it between his fingertips, he pulls out a cool glass phial stoppered at the end with a rubber cork. Inside the phial is grey ash, and Sherlock tilts it back and forth, observing some of the coarser particles fire couldn't completely disintegrate. He shakes it a little, the sound of leftover bone fragments ticking against the sides of the glass tube, before clutching it tightly in his hand. He looks down at his lap.
Without the phial, the skull is just a skull, not even real in the end. Just a really, really good replica. A farce. He sets the grinning thing on the coffee table, and leans back into the couch again, rolling the ashes methodically between his palms.
Ash.
Doesn't he have enough to say about ash? Yes. He's written entire monographs on the properties of ash, and he could probably fill libraries on the topic. It would be his version of waxing poetic on the architecture of the column.
A lot of people don't realise the beauty in the classical order. The Greco-Roman influence can be found all around us, and people pass it by every day. Take Old Bailey for instance. Classic Ionic columns with traditional scrolls at their capital. They look simple enough, but they have a large base. They are unyielding. Like the law in most respects.
"I thought you didn't want to be an architect? Not really. I thought you were just doing that to piss off your father."
Yeah well I loved whatever made him livid, so it's no wonder I fell in love with the very thing he despised; creativity and art and anything that was the opposite of investments, and capitol gain. And passion, especially passion. That's why I recruited you almost instantly to be my best mate. You're a right wanker, and driven, and don't give a rat's arse what people think.
Sherlock snorts at this. "If I remember correctly, it was your dog that did the recruiting. If you can even call it that."
The memory of his laughter — robust and burnished bright like copper, echoes in Sherlock's head, and the sound brings a tentative smile to his lips.
You're my best mate, Sherlock.
The smile falls off his face. "That never did you any good, did it Victor?" he whispers.
He reaches for the skull again and tucks the phial back where it belongs, making sure it is wedged just so behind the mandible so as to not come loose. He rises to his feet again, and places the skull back on the mantle.
His fingertips linger over the cranium for a moment more, before his arm drops back down to his side.
He was an idiot.
Best mate — Best Friend with a capital 'F.' Partner. (Paramour?) These were the terms Jane used to describe what they had, and he managed to forget for a while what those particular titles really meant for people like him. He apparently managed to delete the fact that people like himdidn't have best mates for a reason.
And what was even more infuriating, he especially managed to forget and push aside the only sage advice Mycroft has ever given him about getting involved. About caring. And now — now here he was. Torn between wanting Jane, and being absolutely terrified of what that actually meant for the both of them. Because its not something he can just ignore any longer. He is involved. It's not something that he can just lock up in a room in his MindPalace. The fact of the matter is front and centre, forcing him to confront it head on.
How many times did he believe he was doing the right thing with Jane? It was obvious when it came to Moriarty's games that they were better off united than apart. It was true they could be used against one another, but Sherlock wholeheartedly believed he was clever enough in order to stay one step ahead. If Moriarty expected Sherlock to come to this conclusion, (which he did) then obviously his goal was to drive them apart for one reason or another. So clearly it was more logical to do the opposite and stay together at all costs. Granted, they barely escaped with their lives the last time, but with that fact notwithstanding, they wouldn't have been so compromised in the first place had they not split up to begin with.
Sherlock drags his fingers through his hair and tries to dispel the sudden voice in the back of his head (that sounds an awful lot like Mycroft) telling him that he was reaching at this point. Scrambling for purchase, and subsequently in denial.
'Caring is not an advantage.'
Sherlock whips around and marches over to the desk where his violin is resting in its open case. He pulls it out and tightens his bow, intent on drowning out the infuriating mosquito buzzing around in his head with its stupid umbrella wielding ways and its propensity to always make him second guess himself.
He pulls the notes from the strings as if drawing poison from a wound, and tries as best as he can to lose himself to the metre that is three-four time, subsumed by adagio and mezzo forte.
If only for a little while.
-oOo-
Jane makes it halfway up to the flat when she realises something is off. Usually Sherlock hears the street door, and does one of two things: 1) he bellows throughout the flat for either her or Mrs. Hudson — and if it's for Mrs. Hudson it's actually for her anyway just so Jane will pay attention to him and tell him to stop his hollering, or 2) his violin playing will devolve into a tortured shrieking, because Sherlock only plays decently to those he deems are privy. Which is hardly anyone.
So when Jane hears the strains of a beautiful, yet haunting melody, she stops on the landing to listen. It sounds somewhat familiar, but she knows it's nothing she's heard before, and after adjusting the shopping more securely in her hands, she makes her way up the remaining stairs.
The violin only ceases when she lingers in the doorway of the sitting room.
"Jane," Sherlock says, bow still poised over the strings. His back is to her like it normally is when he plays, preferring to look out the window because it helps him think.
"A case, then?" Jane assumes when he starts back up. He doesn't answer, which is normal, however Jane doesn't move from her spot. There is something about his posture that gives her pause. He looks beaten. Exhausted surely, but a different sort of weariness that she's seen only on a few occasions. She tries to place it, eyes scanning throughout the flat for anything amiss. She almost misses it, but at the last second she catches sight of the mantle. The skull is there like always, but she could have sworn it was facing the kitchen earlier. She thinks Sherlock's skills must be rubbing of on her for having noticed, and now she can recognise the piece he's playing by the cadence. It's Bach, she's sure of it, and suddenly, it all makes sense.
She doesn't know what, precisely, Victor Trevor has to do with Sherlock's skull, and she doesn't ask. But lately he's been drawing in on himself, caught up in a certain tragic nostalgia that her knowledge of is tenuous at best.
All she knows is that Sherlock did have a friend once. Someone who was obviously very dear to him. And when that someone was gone, it scared Sherlock off of companionship for nearly a decade. Really, there were only two things she needed to know to draw her own conclusions. One, that his death had been a shock — Sherlock was the one to find him after his suspicions lead him to try and prevent Victor's suicide just a little too late. And two, Sherlock blamed himself for this through and through.
She doesn't ask because it isn't her place to pry into things she has no right prying into, but she pays especial care to Sherlock's subtle shifts in mood, trying as hard as she can to catch him before he hits the bottom.
The brief croak of the bow as it is pressed just a little too hard into the string is what has Jane abandoning her position (sod the bloody milk for now) and closing the distance between them. She knows this sound well; it is one of a fettered desperation just under the surface of that stoicism, apparent only by the fatigue in his wrists as he continues to play and play and play — until the pain manifests into something physical he could actually deal with, instead of the hateful abstract of pain in his chest.
She's not sure if he knows that's what he's doing in the end, but Jane never fails to recognise the cracks in his carefully layered exterior.
"Will you stop for a moment, Sherlock?" she asks, her voice low and soft. She breaches the chasm even more by placing her hand over the back of his shoulder.
The note stutters to a stop, and he lowers the instrument to hang loosely by his side. He bows his head, and sighs wearily.
"What is it?" he says, the usual sharpness dulled due to resignation. He won't meet her gaze, but that's all right.
Instead, she does what she always does and tugs the violin from his slackening grasp so she can put it and the bow back safely in the case. He lets her, pressing his forehead against the window while she flicks the brass latches closed. When she's done, she looks at him and hesitates.
What she really wants to do is smooth her palms over his broad shoulders to ease the tense muscles, and place a tender kiss on the back of his neck just where the hair curls at the top of his collar - but she's been ill-footed ever since she came back, not sure where the boundaries between them were anymore. Ever since the Pool Fiasco, they had been treading carefully around each other, giving each other space and reaffirming their bond as friends before anything else.
She takes a breath and does the next best thing, which is tugging at Sherlock's wrist until he turns around and looks at her with his shifting blue/green eyes.
"All right?" she murmurs, pulling him a little closer. He nods woodenly, and allows her to tug him into an embrace. After a moment of unyielding tension, he breathes out and all but melts into her, face burrowing into the crook of her neck. She smiles, and brings her hands up to cradle his skull, twining her fingers gently in his disheveled hair that's still damp in some places. She can tell he hasn't been sleeping well, and she's not surprised. She traces little whorls into his scalp, feeling him relax even further. "Better?"
"Yes, I'm — I'm fine," Sherlock says, pulling back after a moment. He clears his throat, an embarrassed flush tinting his cheeks. Jane turns away from him, giving him a moment of privacy. She goes into the kitchen to turn on the kettle same as she always does, taking solace in the familiar routine.
"You went shopping," Sherlock remarks from the sitting room. Jane can hear the plastic rustle of the carrier bags, and she suddenly remembers the shirt she bought from Liberty's.
"Wait!" she says, running out just in time to see Sherlock regarding the box wrapped in festive paper with a shiny foil bow on the centre. He has one finger tucked under the folded corner, poised to tear it apart. "Don't you even dare, Sherlock Holmes."
"Why not?" he says, eyes lighting up, devious. "It's obviously for me seeing as how you wouldn't have bothered to wrap it before coming home. So it's meant to be secret, then. Not for Mrs. Hudson, no. You like to be thorough, and haven't had the chance to ask her what she wants, and you, ever so intentional Jane, don't want waste time getting people useless trinkets that will end up in a charity shop come February." Jane rolls her eyes at the rapid deductions, but it's halfhearted. The truth is, she would rather have him be an annoying rambly-dick than that remote, withdrawn figure from a moment ago.
"A secret, exactly. Now give it here," she says trying to sound disapproving.
"So it is for me," Sherlock says, holding her at bay with a palm on her collar bone as he lifts the box up higher, narrowing his eyes as if that would activate some sort of latent x-ray ability. He's certainly intent in his scrutiny, as if scowling hard enough would help him see the contents just beyond the dancing Christmas trees and boughs of holly.
"Yes, you prat. But it's for Christmas, and you can't open it until then," Jane says and swipes it from him.
"Oh dull. What's the point in waiting for a specific day to open a gift? Holidays are rubbish, full of obligatory 'get-togethers' and false overall fond…ness." He says the word with a crinkle of his nose.
"You're just throwing a strop because crime is usually down during this time of year."
"Don't remind me," he bemoans, and plucks the parcel from her again, holding it high over her head where she can't reach.
"It's your fault. There's been loads of perfectly good clients you've turned down," she huffs, standing on tip-toes to try and snatch the present to no avail.
"What, you mean the little girls and their missing granddad we had yesterday?"
"That, and the poor sod found in Southwark," Jane rejoins.
"I didn't have enough data for that one, I told you," Sherlock says, gritting his teeth.
"No," Jane says, "you're just pissy you couldn't figure it out, and in light of — what did you call it? — the 'absurd happenstance' of the case, to work on it any further would only be a 'detriment of fine superior brain power.'"
"The whole thing was a circus act! The plane tickets; the special first class biscuits; the fact he was stuffed in the car boot in his Sunday best. Ridiculous. I have far better things to occupy my time with. He wasn't even murdered for chrissake."
"Yeah but he was supposed to die in that plane crash in Düsseldorf!" Jane exclaims. "Don't you have any theories?"
Sherlock glares at her before shaking the present he was holding. "I have a few theories about what's inside this box."
"Oh come on, Sherlock. Don't spoil it!" Jane says.
"It's a shirt."
Jane flares her nostrils. "Stop guessing," she says, and whacks the crease of his arm so he'll drop the present once and for all.
"I never guess," he pouts, rubbing the inside of his elbow. "I know it's a shirt."
"No, you don't," she says obstinately. She holds it close to her chest, trying to hide her disappointment.
"Jane," he says, giving her a 'be serious, of course I know what's in the box I'm the best detective in London' sort of look. She purses her lips. "Jane."
"So what if you're right? You're not opening it until Christmas." She walks over and props it tauntingly on the desk.
"But I know what it is already!" Sherlock says.
"Doesn't matter. You're not getting it until Christmas. And I will know if you try to open it behind my back," she says, whirling around and pushing him away from the desk.
"What do you expect me to do? It's just sitting there mocking me!" Sherlock says. "You know as well as I do I am not responsible for my actions when I'm bored." He crosses his arms haughtily.
Jane goes to retort when an idea suddenly hits her. She makes her way over to the mantle. "You're bored, are you?"
"Horrendously so."
"In that case, you shouldn't have any qualms about —" She doesn't get to finish, when Sherlock stridently cuts her off.
"No! We are not doing that!" he nearly shouts when Jane retrieves a pair of theatre tickets from the utility knife pinned to the wood that served as their placeholder for various correspondence.
"Oh yes we are. Tonight's the last night, and thanks to Angelo, these are redeemable anytime as long as the show is running. Waste not, want not," she says grabbing her jacket again.
"Well, I happen to 'want not.' Go without me," Sherlock says, shooing her with his hand.
"Ah, no. Last time I left you alone when you were like this you shot up the walls, and then blew up the flat," she says, tossing him his greatcoat.
"That was not my fault," Sherlock says indignantly, but shrugs on his Belstaff all the same. He mutters darkly under his breath, but allows her to lead them out to the pavement where they set off in the direction of finding a cab. She can tell his black mood is really just for show at this point, and that he's actually grateful for an excuse to get out of the flat.
He doesn't have to say anything, but when his hand finds its way into hers, Jane can't help but smile a little when he squeezes it in gratitude.