|FastForward|18012011|Play|
The first time she goes missing, John turns up at St. Bart's in an absolute frenzy; a flurry of Winter breeze and well worn dark jacket.
"She's gone, Sherlock," he exclaims, breath coming in short, panicked gasps- the result of a short run when traffic was being simply too slow for his flustered state.
Of course, Sherlock does not respond; simply sits completely stationary, safety goggles perched precariously on the end of his nose.
"Sherlock!" John repeats leaning slumped against the doorframe, "Sherlock. Listen to me." He straightens, takes two determined steps into the room- "She's gone. She's missing."
Sherlock looks up with a laboured sigh and removes his safety goggles with an irritated noise of displeasure.
"No."
John braces his weight on his hands, palms flat against the table as he leans forward, closer to the other man as if this will somehow help him get his point across.
"Are you even listening to me? She's gone. Vanished. She isn't anywhere in the flat, she isn't with Mrs. Hudson..."
"And so you simply assume that she's missing? Interesting." Sherlock clicks his tongue between his teeth as he tugs off the thin, translucent gloves that he has been wearing upon his hands, a quizzical expression finding its way onto his face. "I don't doubt that you have a perfectly sound explanation for your choices," Sherlock continues, "but tell me this: every time you or I are away from Baker Street, are we missing?"
John shakes his head in disbelief. "You aren't listening," he snaps, becoming more and more agitated by the second, "You aren't listening to me. She's missing. She's gone. There were people out to get her, Sherlock, and we were supposed to be keeping her safe!"
Sherlock breathes in, the air passing by his clenched teeth with a sound that vaguely resembles a whistle as he looks at his flatmate wearily. He had told John of Mycroft's request, but had not told him the details; had simply gone to him with hushed tones and half explanations and John had not pressed on the matter.
"Indeed," he says now, "Safe. You try and keep me safe and yet you don't coddle me; the two are very different things."
John sits down with an exasperated sigh, his hands coming up to rub at his face.
"We don't even know who she is," he mutters, "what's going on? No-" he continues as the other man goes to cut across him, "no, seriously, Sherlock. What the hell is going on?"
Sherlock looks at John properly for the first time since he has entered the room and gives him an infuriating smile: the vaguely smug, knowing smile that drives John to the edge of distraction. The former stands and buttons up the button on his jacket, before going to fetch his coat and scarf from where they hang on the back of a discarded chair.
"Leave this to me," he says, "go home and get everything ready for our return."
John looks up, confusion evident in his expression.
"You know where she is?"
Sherlock smirks.
"I have a fairly good idea, yes."
-x-
He finds her not an hour later: he sees her far before she notices him and he takes a moment to watch her before approaching.
The skies are a miserable grey, the clouds merging together to form a humongous mass of nothingness. She sits under a spindly tree, the branches reaching down and around her in a way that is almost skeletal comfort. She sits alone, cross-legged, back propped up against the gnarly bark of the trunk. She sits in the gravel and the soil, out of sight from the majority of people who were to pass through.
But he is not the majority of people and so of course, he sees her almost at once. He takes his time in approaching her, stepping carefully and almost silently across the ground between them.
"I'm not hiding."
Sherlock is neither ashamed nor afraid to admit that he is surprised when she speaks first, even though she hasn't yet turned to look at him. He simply shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat and shrugs one shoulder.
"Never said you were."
She nods, but says nothing more and so Sherlock bends his knees to squat down beside her. Evie casts her gaze towards the floor and a single tear drops from one eye.
"Sadness," Sherlock comments offhandedly, "commonly, if one cries from the right eye first, it indicates sadness. But if the first tear falls from the left eye, then more often than not, they are tears of happiness."
"What reason do I have to be sad?" Evie snaps, swiping angrily at her eyes.
"You tell me," Sherlock murmurs, "you. tell. me." He cocks his head to the side and looks at her intently; each word is punctuated and yet his voice has lost the usual harshness it carries whilst talking to her. She says nothing at all, but shudders under the intensity of his gaze, feeling uncomfortably exposed as she always, always does. He narrows his eyes and in that moment, she knows that she will never be able to hide anything from him; she is an open book, with her thoughts and opinions printed across her face for him to read and judge and she hates him- despises him for it.
"Well..." he says, finally moving to sit down beside her, "if my parents had died the gruesome way yours did and if my Godfather had been found slaughtered inside the piano he loved and cherished and if I had been on the run ever since then I would probably feel... 'sad' as well." he spits out the word as if it is poison on his tongue, "I would say you had plenty of reasons to be sad, Evelyn Deighton."
They sit in silence for several, long seconds as Evelyn tries desperately to gather her wits and get over the fact that he—oh, but of course he did. Of course he knew. What was it that she had been thinking only a few seconds ago? She will never be able to hide anything from him. She lifts her head to stare at him, to try and decipher something, anything about his mysterious form, this man that cannot be a man. And yet there is nothing. His stoic expression, his harsh words and the indifferent air that always surrounds him offers nothing to indicate how he may be feeling. She briefly wonders if he does feel, or if feelings are nothing but a foreign concept.
"How long have you known?" she asks him, averting her eyes and instead fixing her gaze upon a patch of soil. It is darker than the rests, stained black by the water that has dripped from a branch of the spindly tree, turned thick where wood touches ground.
"Well, I've known something was amiss since the start," he tells her, "but your fingers…" he takes her wrist in his hand and gently turns it over in his grasp, gentle touches forcing her fingers to relax. "The slight indents at the tips of your fingers on the left hand…" he holds out his own and spreads out the digits so that they represent hers. "I have them as well. The tiny horizontal lines at our fingertips from pressing down the strings of a violin just that little bit too hard. After so many years of playing, they never quite go away. That part of the hand is always rather tender to the touch… you can always feel your last tune… the last symphony…" he trails off, looking for a reaction from the other. She is staring straight ahead, eye fixed on something non-existent.
"They're dead," she finally murmurs, as if it has only just hit her, "they're… dead."
And without looking at him, or anybody else, Evelyn Deighton finally shakes the pretence of 'being brave' and begins to cry.