A/N sorry about the delay, I want this to all be just right - so there's a lot of working and reworking at the moment. The next chapter is a doozy, so bear with me as this one sets the scene.
Credit to Arienne DeVere for her fantastic transcript of TFP (available on LiveJournal), and all those writers who have inspired me with their versions of the aftermath of That Scene. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go watch it again, and plan out the next few chapters.
Enjoy.
I own nothing by my plot bunnies.
Molly watches as at the screen comes to life with a young woman – not much older than her – plays the violin in a bleak cell. She has long dark hair and is wearing pale clothes. The feed only shows her back, and the sound of an automatic door brings the unmistakable figure of Sherlock into the frame. The young woman doesn't cease her playing when he enters, and when he takes a step forward, she warns him backward with some jarring nores. Molly can tell that Sherlock seems uncertain: he's cocked his head to one side, but she can't see his face.
"Did you bring it?"
"I'm sorry?" Sherlock sounds like he wasn't expecting that opening line.
"My hairband. Did you bring it like I asked?"
Sherlock hesitates before answering. "I'm not one of the ... I-I don't work here."
"My special hairband."
"I'm not one of your doctors."
"The one I made you steal, from Mummy." The woman sounds exasperated and she turns to face Sherlock. Molly stifles a gasp as she takes in the same fey features: the cheekbones, the chin, the eyes… there can be no doubt that these two are siblings. The woman seems to be fascinated with Sherlock, and Molly finds herself feeling uncomfortable.
"It was the last thing I said to you, remember, the day they took me away."
Sherlock shook his head at her. "No."
"No?"
Molly watches the scene with a growing sense of unease. The young woman – Eurus – is weighing up Sherlock like a snake measuring its prey to strike. The cadences she uses when talking sets off every alarm bell in Molly's brain, and she jumps when, instead of touching glass, Eurus clasps hands with Sherlock.
She has seen both Sherlock and Mycroft act with what others call inhuman carelessness and disregard, but they are nothing to what Molly is watching.
Without warning, Eurus slaps Sherlock over both ears and Molly flinches at the unexpected action – half raising a hand to the screen as she watches Eurus proceed to strangle her older brother – presumably showing him how she got out, and once he'd passed out, she calmly stands, and has the guards drag him – gently – out of the main doors. Eurus pauses and looks directly at the camera, and smiles. Molly feels her blood run cold.
The recording seems shift slightly, it's another cell, similar to Eurus', but Molly can see the glass, and a screen just in front of it. Sherlock is lying on the floor still unconscious, but starting to wake. He coughs, rights himself, and after a few steadying breaths, he starts to pace. He stops briefly when Mycroft, a man Molly doesn't recognise, and an unconscious John are brought into the cell. Sherlock and the unfamiliar man put John on the bed, while Mycroft leaves the camera's line of sight – he must be in the corner.
The camera angle flickers, and the view is now straight at the cells from eye-height. Sherlock is still pacing, Mycroft in one corner, the man in the other, and John is groaning. Molly doesn't know how much time has passed, but she can tell Sherlock is nervous. John groans, as she sees Sherlock shoot a look towards the bed before looking back down at the floor in his pacing.
"How are you?"
John rubs the back of his head "Bit of a lump."
"True that, but you have your uses."
John groans again and sits up. "Did you see your sister?"
"Yes."
Molly watches their interplay and uncertainty grow as the voice of a very scared little girl on a plane pipes through before static. She hears Eurus' voice come from somewhere behind her camera, but from the way Sherlock is looking almost directly at her, Molly surmises that there's a camera above a screen – the screen that' allowing her an eye level look into their cell - and she is seeing what Eurus saw. Molly can see their expressions, the anguish of the man – David – as he pleads for somebody to kill him and spare his wife. She can't watch as John makes him kneel, but almost falls in on herself when he walks away saying he can't do it. It is with mute horror that Molly watches Dave kill himself, feeling sick at what she was witnessing, and then flinched in shock as she listened to the sing song voice of Eurus after another gunshot. From the looks on their faces, Molly can only guess what they have just seen as the look almost directly at her. Sherlock looks absolutely stunned, and from the way Eurus is speaking, she was watching their reactions to the test very closely.
A small door to the left of the cell opens, and as each one vanishes out of the camera's view, Molly sat back and looked up, blinking back the burning feeling behind her eyes. If anybody had doubted how Sherlock had grown in the years she had known him, this video was proving that he was, indeed, human. She couldn't ever think of a time when Sherlock was as mechanical as Eurus appeared to be, but Mycroft's words rang in her head about how his sister made Sherlock the man he was.
The screen flickered and the camera changed to the next room – a table with an envelope it, and a three-panelled window looking out over the sea behind it. As Sherlock, John and Mycroft make it into the camera's range, Molly finds herself bracing for what was to come next.
A/N Like it? Let me know what you think. Until the next chapter.
