Part Three.
A little over a year and a half later, when Thea looked back on all that had transpired, she often wondered if she could have changed the outcome of everything. She wondered what could've been said or done to alter her life for the better. She wondered if she shouldn't have told Dr John Watson to write his blog. She wondered if she should have stuck to her studies, reaching ambitiously to be an editor for an esteemed publishing company. And she wondered if, even for a moment, she could ever be happy again. The course of life was a fixed one, she'd eventually resolved in her thoughts, and the trials in hers were always meant to play out the way they did.
She was always meant to be heartbroken. She was always destined to be an orphan.
Thea collapsed in John's armchair, having just built a roaring fire to warm her tired limbs, with a book on the side table next to her. She glanced at it and thumbed through the pages, attempting to find the place she'd last left on earlier that morning. It was late in the night; she and Hem had spent the day at his workshop, a space he rented out to work specifically on his sculptures, as well as walking around the city, mostly talking but stopping occasionally in small, eclectic shops. It had all culminated in a bag of books, matching silver scarves embroidered with their initials, and tired, aching feet.
What had fascinated her most was Hem's work, his art pieces that cried out for human attention and understanding. They were massive in height, seemingly reaching out to touch the stars and planets. He liked working with sharp edges and lines, and it was somehow combined with graceful curves to create caricatures of objects, such as a fountain pen aimed at the sky.
"I call it 'A Test of Might'," he'd explained, laughing at himself as his hand found the back of his head. "It's cliché."
Thea had circled the piece, admiring it, "No, no… Maybe. But it's magnificent."
She'd been given a tour of the facilities and the tools of his craft, and he set to working a little on his most recent project, an illusory representation of a thorny rose, to explain his process.
She was thinking about his work when she heard the front door slam open from below. She furrowed her brows – John was on a date of his own, with a plain woman named Sarah – and her father was not one to announce his presence on a whim. But sure enough, she could hear a baritone singing from the stairwell. She stood, worried, and started for the stairs. She peeked over the banister and was shocked to find her father, normally so composed and in control of himself, sprawled on the bottom stairs of the building, a large bottle in his left hand that swung from his lips to his side. Thea felt her stomach drop as she rushed down the stairs.
"Papa! What've you done?" she cried, and he looked up at her with sagging eyes as she passed the last few steps between them.
"Theeea," he slurred, and she caught a whiff of the intense alcohol he held in his hand. She stepped over him and knelt at his side, assessing his state. "So nice to see you."
"Jesus, how much have you been drinking?" Thea interrogated, and she stood, helping him along the way. She threw his arm over her shoulder and made him stand, keeping his weight firmly against her. "C'mon, upstairs. We can talk up there."
Sherlock nodded enthusiastically, "Sure, sure. Where's John? I need t' thank him." He took careless steps and struggled as Thea kept him upright.
She sighed, "He's not here, he went out with a girl, name's Sarah."
"He's on a date?" There was a hint of disappointment in his tone, but he seemed to cast it aside, "Good for him."
His daughter scoffed, the last flight of steps ahead of them, "She's boring. It won't last."
Sherlock hummed in slight satisfaction, and they crossed the threshold into their flat. Thea settled him into his armchair, prying his coat and scarf from him with careful hands. He was staring blankly into the fireplace, watching as the embers flared and faltered in a silent rhythm, and his legs were splayed out in front of himself, stretching toward John's chair. His eyes were sad, and his mouth was pouted as if he were on the verge of tears. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen her father look so much like someone else.
She cleared her throat nervously, "Erm, I'm going to make tea." Sherlock barely nodded, and she crept slowly toward him before taking the bottle from his left hand. He let it drop from his hand into hers. She pressed it to her chest and backed into the kitchen, keeping her eyes trained on him. It had been a bottle of hard whiskey; it was half-empty. "Is it a danger night?"
Thea hated using the term, something Mycroft had come up with years before to signal when her father was close to abusing substances again. It felt demeaning to use it against her father, but it felt necessary in the moment.
He shrugged. "The possibility is ever-present. Every night could be a danger night."
She took a deep breath. In the back of her mind, she knew it was true. The lure of the high, the thrill of chasing that small taste of euphoria, would never leave him. But it didn't make it easier to hear. She distracted herself with the kettle and tea leaves. "You're lucky I'm the one who found you. Anyone else would have contacted Lestrade or, worse, Uncle."
He waved away her words, like nagging flies, and curled himself up sideways in his chair. "Boring."
Thea bit the inside of her lip in frustration and blew a harsh stream of breath through her nose. She let the silence impregnate the room before carrying over his cup of tea. When he'd taken it, she sat back down in John's armchair, her elbows propped on her knees as she leaned forward to warm herself. She found that the words she wanted to say were stuck in her throat. "The results weren't good, were they?"
Her father didn't need to ask what she meant. He seemed to be watching the fire with more intensity than before. "I was wrong."
Thea thought back to that night, the night John had saved her father. She'd always thought that maybe it had been unnecessary, killing the cabbie. Maybe Sherlock had chosen correctly, and a man had died for nothing – other murders aside. She could feel the cabbie in the room with them, hovering over her with his downy white hair and newsie cap, glasses perched haughtily over his crooked nose. A gloating smile was twisted on his thin lips, and he was mouthing the words, "I won." She swallowed hard.
"It was a fifty-fifty shot," she reassured quietly, feeling as if a harp player were strumming her heartstrings into a forlorn melody. "You're here now, that's what matters."
"I was sure I was right," Sherlock continued, ignoring her comforts. "I had to be right. I'd made certain in my mind that I chose right for you."
Thea didn't know what to say. She felt a lump forming in the back of her throat, threatening to barricade the air from her lungs. "For me?"
"I couldn't abandon you." His voice had broken slightly, his hands cupped tightly around the teacup. "I promised her that I'd always…" He stopped, swallowing at the realisation of where he was directing the conversation, before pressing the cup to his lips. "Nevermind."
She leaned back into the armchair. The opportunity was just there at her fingertips, all she had to do was seize it. "Why don't you talk about her?" She could see Sherlock darkening; the thought of her mother was like a flower that closed up at the slightest of touches. "Please, Papa, I don't know anything about her."
"You know she was an artist, and she loved you," her father retorted abruptly. "I've told you as much."
Thea pushed herself from her seat and kneeled in front of his chair, her hands on his arm. "It's not enough!" she cried, gripping him tightly as tears pricked her eyes. "I want to know what her hopes and dreams were, I want to know what her favourite colour was. I want to know what she looked like, how she smiled, the way she interacted with the world. I want to know so much about her that it feels like she's a part of me." In a smaller voice, she whispered, "I want to know where she's buried. I want to visit her – I want to talk to her."
Sherlock looked down at his daughter, her pretty face glowing orange in the flickers of the fire. It cast shadows across her, highlighting the desperation in her eyes as she gazed up at him. The room in his mind palace, dedicated to her mother, had been kept behind a brick wall, safe from him. He'd have destroyed it the moment she'd died if it weren't for Thea, the illustration of their love. And now, as their daughter pleaded for her, he could feel the bricks crumbling. He watched in his mind's eye as the door became more and more discernible, the bricks turning to dust that billowed around him. His mind palace trembled at the sudden disturbance, as if the whole world had shifted. And then suddenly, the door to her opened, and he felt a wash of light and warmth as she came back to him.
He felt her name on his lips, he was breathing her in and tasting her skin, and suddenly he was falling through his memories.
Thea watched as Sherlock's sky-coloured eyes suddenly began spilling tears, and she reached up to wipe them away. "I'm sorry, Papa, I didn't mean to open old wounds, I just –"
"Her name was Gwen. She had my heart the moment she smiled," he remembered quietly, and Thea listened, overwhelmed, as her father went on. "We met in university, at one of the few parties I attended." He paused just a moment to stare up at the mantle, as if trying to clear the tears in his eyes. "She was wearing this beautiful green dress that exactly matched her eyes, and she moved with such purpose that I knew I must talk to her. But she seemed to have the same idea about me, and she came up to me and asked, 'Have we met?' I was so flustered that I went right into deducing her, and I thought to myself that I was the epitome of insolence. I was sure I'd scared her off – but she was fascinated. She laughed and pulled me to a quiet spot, where we talked the rest of the evening."
Thea, a smile tugging at her lips, played the scene in her mind, "What did she look like?"
Sherlock glanced at the bookcase and murmured, "I could tell you but…" and he stood, carefully, and reached for a certain book, as if he'd been waiting for this moment. "It would be best to show you." And he opened the book to pull out two pictures, closing it and setting it on the table next to him before sitting back in his chair. He held the pictures tightly between his fingers, hunching himself over them as he looked down. Then without a word, he held them out to his daughter. Thea took them gingerly and felt her heart begin pounding in her chest. Then she looked down at her mother for the very first time.
It felt like Thea was looking at a different version of herself. The woman in the first photograph had long, wavy, chestnut hair that had been recently tousled, with hazy green eyes that seemed to unlock the secrets of the world. A daisy was tucked behind her right ear. Thea had her mother's nose and lips, she realised, and she touched them absentmindedly. The long and narrow bridge of her nose, the full bowed lips that begged for a smile and a kiss. Her mother looked a little older than herself, about nineteen years old, laughing at the camera and revealing a dimple in each freckled cheek. She was wearing a striped, short-sleeved shirt with a high neck, coloured in reds, oranges, browns, and golds. She had recently been on holiday, given the golden hue of her skin and the freckles that peppered it.
She flipped over the photograph to see the date. Her mother had autographed it, with spiralling curls and flourishes. Her surname was indecipherable. The date on the back revealed the photo had been taken in August of 1991, less than a year before Thea was born. She looked up at her father.
"Did she know yet?" she asked tentatively. Sherlock shook his head, resting his chin against his fist. The effects of the alcohol seemed to be wearing off, slowly but surely.
"We didn't find out until a couple of weeks later." When Thea nodded, he felt compelled to add, "She was nervous of the implications at first, but she loved you from the moment we knew. She talked and sung to you every second she could, telling you constantly that we were so excited to meet you and watch you grow up."
Thea watched as her father sipped his tea carefully, eyes drowning in his cup. "Were you?"
There was a flash of blue in her direction before his eyes found the fire again. He took his time in answering. "I had never thought of myself as a potential father, Thea. My work had always been in another place, a distant place, where there were no distractions. But the morning we heard your heartbeat, I felt everything else melt away. I knew nothing in the world would ever matter as much as you did. And nothing ever has, despite my most selfish actions."
Thea felt her heart tighten with a sudden flush of affection, but she kept herself in check as she looked to the next photograph. In it, her mother had her arms wrapped around her father's neck, their cheeks pressed together as his right arm snaked around her waist with his other hand stuck in his pocket. They were smiling widely at the camera, in the same spot as the previous picture. Sherlock looked so young, with shorter hair and fewer lines etched into his handsome face. His smile transformed him into someone approachable, not the complicated man she knew now. She cleared her throat.
"I've never seen you so happy," she observed gently. "She brought out the best of you."
He gave a short laugh. "You haven't a clue. She was my reason for everything, until you were born." Thea started to hand back the pictures, but he held up a hand in protest. "Keep them. I have them up here." He pointed to his temple, the ghost of a smile on his lips. Thea looked back down at them, trying to memorise them. He watched her for a moment with the barest hint of paternal love for her, then asked, "Now, what else did you want to know about her?"
And there they sat, stoking the fire and talking of a woman made of sunshine, until dawn broke through the windows of 221B Baker Street, as if Gwen herself were greeting them for the new day.
AN: Hello again! This chapter turned out longer than I had thought, but I'm glad for it! I had struggled in where I wanted to introduce this chapter, whether I wanted it before or after the events of Scandal in Belgravia, but I decided that Gwen would be an excellent starting point for the events of S2E1.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter! More of Gwen is in the works, so don't be disappointed that there wasn't too much revealed here. As always, I encourage you to give me your thoughts! Please favorite/follow for more updates, and thank you so much for reading!