A/N: I'm so sorry for taking this long with the chapter, seriously. I'm never abandoning the story though, even if I take a while with the updates. Huge thanks to my betas Eli and Lucy for the insights.
On with the story!
The rest of the weekend passed without further incident.
Mrs. Hudson returned from her trip to the countryside on Saturday afternoon and tried her very best to disguise her surprise at Shelley's return. They hugged for a long time, and all the while Mrs. Hudson tried to assure Shelley that she had not been fooled. Shelley laughed and patted the older woman's back, not at all convinced by her vehement demeanor. She knew their landlady had been deeply affected by her apparent death, but they'd been together for so many years before that she really should've known better. At least that's what she'd expected of her elder; not to believe Shelley would remain dead. That, of course, didn't stop Mrs. Hudson from crying copiously into the younger woman's shirt after the detective declared she'd missed their landlady very much as well.
Josephine eyed the exchange unfold in front of her and wondered if all that emotion had been pent up and locked inside since day one. She felt her eyes begin to water and a melancholy smile play on her lips as she stood watching Mrs. Hudson embracing Shelley like there was no tomorrow. She tried to hide her flushed face behind the newspaper she was pretending to read. Shelley had always been warm to their landlady; Josephine could still remember how she'd thought the young detective was untouchable and cold until seeing her at their door hugging Mrs. Hudson the way she'd hug and kiss a dear grandmother.
That Sunday morning Josephine woke up to what she thought was an empty flat, just to find Shelley's lanky frame curled up on the sofa, deeply asleep. She then proceeded with her usual Sunday routine: put the kettle on for some tea, clean the dishes from the night before and make some toast. When the kettle finally whistled, Josephine had a plate with toast ready and a mug with a tea bag just waiting for the boiling water.
"Get me a mug." Shelley was standing by the kitchen table, the oversized tee-shirt she wore hanging off a shoulder and exposing an expanse of marble pale skin and one protruding collarbone. Her voice sounded thick with sleep as she rubbed an eye with the back of her hand.
Josephine complied, and soon filled another mug with steaming water, a tea bag and the correct amount of sugar, before getting her own breakfast and going back to the sitting room. She sat cross legged in front of her laptop and perused her e-mails mindlessly while she ate. There were a few new comments on her last post, two of them from Mrs. Hudson. She wondered briefly what people would think about Shelley's return; she'd received all kinds of e-mails and comments on the blog over the past year, some of them supportive and others –mostly anonymous- insisted her best friend was indeed a fake.
"You should do it." Shelley's voice sounded right behind her, a clear sign of the taller girl's actual location stealing a view at Josephine's laptop. She snickered at her sly behaviour and turned to meet her friend's gaze. "Think about it, Jo. Do you really think blackmailing some tabloid journalist into writing an article on my behalf would be a better course of action than revealing the truth yourself?"
Shelley held the mug securely with both hands and blew softly at it, sending curls of steam through the air. It was… Logical, if Josephine was willing to consider it. Sensible even. She worried at her thumb nail for a while, and bet Shelley could actually see the gears turning inside her skull. To be honest, Josephine felt honored. And in the back of her mind, she felt out of her league. Writing the blog started as part of the therapy, and soon after it became part of their everyday life; going through the cases and the adrenaline, and then writing it all down for people to see just how amazing Shelley Holmes really was. But that was it. Josephine Watson was just the assistant, the help. A mere human with common abilities and slow thought processes like everybody else; someone who could be easily replaced as soon as she started to bore the consulting detective. And to top it all off, she didn't even have professional training in writing to be able to come up with a decent 'The-famous-Holmes-is-back-from-the-dead' article. Or should that be infamous?
"It would serve him right, for being the one who started with the fake accusations anyway." She folded her arms across her chest and faced away from Shelley, knowing full well that her thoughts must have been written all over her face. All in all, the screen of her laptop seemed as good a place as any to place her gaze upon.
The only sounds Josephine heard from Shelley after were a tired sigh and her lazy, dragged footsteps towards her room, from which she didn't reemerge for the rest of the day.
Jo. SH
Jo. SH
Jo, I need you to come home immediately. SH
It was Monday, ten thirty in the morning, when Josephine finally got the time to check on her cell phone, which had been lying inside a drawer and buzzing incessantly during all of her morning appointments. Three new texts and God only knows how many more to come, judging by Shelley's tone on the last one. It buzzed again, to Josephine's dismay, and she opened the text.
Jo. Come home now. SH
A tired sigh escaped her lips. She considered closing the damn thing and tucking it inside her drawer again, but then the buzzing might never cease. Clearing her head, she typed I can't, Shelley. I'm working! and stared at the letters for about twenty seconds before the mobile buzzed again with the other's reply. But I'm bored. SH it said.
"Of course." Josephine muttered under her breath, shut the phone with a little more force than she probably should, and shoved it inside her white coat pocket.
She hid her face in the palms of her hands for a second, shielding her eyes from the artificial brightness of the little office. She could hear coughing outside. Patients lined up for her to see. A huge pile of files stared back at her from the top of the desk. She ran her fingers over the first one and pulled it, reading the information regarding Mrs. Barnes. More coughing.
She hung the stethoscope on her neck and crossed the distance to the door in one stride. Considering the pile waiting for her on the desk, there was no time to lose if she wanted to leave the practice before two in the afternoon.
Josephine was late.
Well, not late exactly, since she didn't have strict schedules or an official agreement with Milo, but she'd never arrived at the hospital, the morgue more specifically, after three in the afternoon. It was already five.
She'd eaten a sandwich Sean got her before leaving the clinic, which meant she actually swallowed the whole thing in one bite in the cab. Sean was a nice guy, she thought with gratitude, nice and caring and sweet. It was really a shame they hadn't worked out together. Sean had spent a great deal of the past year resenting Josephine. Even though she came to work every day on time, never leaving before all her patients were taken care of. Still, Sean had begrudged her for all the times she'd left the practice without a plausible explanation and he had to take over the patients she had left. But now… it seemed that he was finally letting go of the hurt Josephine had unintentionally inflicted. She stared down at her hands and the crumbs covering her lap and smiled. If Sean could consider forgiving her, letting him down wasn't something she planned on, even if it meant she'd leave the practice late for the next decade or so.
Still with that thought in mind, she jumped from the cab and threw a few notes inside, before running through the hospital doors. Patients and staff stared quizzically at her as she flew through doors and hallways as quickly as possible. She ran so fast, in fact, that the imagined pain in her knee that had been bothering her for the past month was simply ignored.
When the doctor approached the door that separated her from the morgue lab, a very distinct and repetitive noise caught her attention. She touched the doorknob very quietly, still not pushing the door open, and listened. The slapping sounds continued for a few seconds, and then stopped. The doorknob turned inside her grasp and escaped from it, revealing the presence of a much disheveled consulting detective on the other side of the door.
"Hello, Jo. Do come in." Shelley stepped aside and motioned for Josephine to enter the lab with a flick of the riding crop she still held, a clear sign that the detective had probably resumed her research on post mortem wounds. Or another way to treat her chronic boredom. Most likely the latter.
Josephine eyed her best friend suspiciously, but entered the lab anyway. It was then that she also realised there was a mass of papers piled high by the microscope, a few of them scattered over the pristine counter surface. The microscope was on, and she could see that Shelley had worked through a few slides already. She didn't know she'd been standing somewhere between the counters until a familiar male voice woke her from the reverie.
"Josie?" She sighed and turned her head, finding Milo's eyes staring deeply into hers with a heavy shade of concern infused in them. He brought his hand to the nape of his neck and scratched lightly in a nervous manner. "It's… You know. I should have called earlier, I'm sorry… But Shelley came here a few hours ago and she asked me for something to do and…"
The world had been upside down for a moment, Josephine figured. Things weren't exactly clear, as if there were details lurking in every corner, just waiting for her to figure them out and finally see the bigger picture. She hadn't been looking, couldn't bring herself to care about the details before. But they'd just slapped her on the face.
Milo didn't seem to be shocked by seeing Shelley alive and walking about, making demands and whipping cadavers to know how their injuries behaved when they were inflicted by a riding crop. No, he looked… embarrassed. Josephine couldn't for the life of her understand why. He should've been ecstatic, he'd harbored a crush on Shelley for as long as Josephine knew him, and was devastated when the detective died. The fact that he'd been responsible for her best friend's autopsy still wasn't something she could understand, he'd been so attached to her and… Then it all made sense.
Josephine brought a hand to cover her own mouth as realization dawned on her. Milo made an attempt at approaching, but she stepped back, still looking at him in disbelief.
"You knew."
The two words weighed heavily in the silent lab. Josephine narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms in front of her chest, still waiting for an explanation that may or may not come.
Shelley broke the silence at last.
"Well, of course he knew. I had to find an available and convincing corpse, and also someone to make an autopsy accordingly. This had to be convincing!" She threw the riding crop on top of the counter, and motioned emphatically with both her hands in the air. "Who else could I trust to do this?"
The last few words left the consulting detective's mouth before she could evaluate their meaning, and Josephine felt defeated at last. She dropped her hands to her sides and turned around, intending to leave the lab.
"I understand. 'Who?' you say. Well, just so you know, I've been in the army. I know a thing or two about strategy." She muttered while walking to the door and opening it. As she stepped outside of the thick atmosphere, a sad smile tainted her expression.
"I take you won't be in need of my eyes for the tissue analysis for the time being, Mr. Hooper. Shelley."
With that, Josephine Watson left the building, silently blaming the sandwich she'd eaten earlier for the heavy feeling at the pit of her stomach.
(TBC)