Neither of them remember how it happened, and neither of them particularly care. Maybe it had been there since the night of their first case, when she leaned against him in the alley, or maybe it had developed during slow hours of frustrated games of chess. Neither of them knew, and neither particularly cared.
"Mary?" John stares at her. "What are you doing here?"
"Drinking tea." Mary smiles brightly from her seat in the kitchen.
Sherlock unwraps his scarf glancing down the hallway. "Where's Holiday?"
"She said she'd be back, had to go avenge your almost deaths or something. She said to go ahead and eat though."
Sherlock paces to the window as John finds bowls.
"Sherlock? You hungry?"
"I'll wait." He falls into his chair, hands pressed together.
The broken clock on the wall ticks sporadically as John tells Mary the story of the tube car in a hushed voice. Down below, the door closes quietly.
"Holiday?"
There's no response, just the creaking of stairs. When she steps into the kitchen, John swears violently, causing Sherlock to leap from his chair.
"Fucking - Christ Wom. What happened?"
The response is leaden. "Thermal goggles."
She wants to shrink away under the three pairs of wide eyes, but forces herself to stay upright. Her clothes are torn and dirty. Everything about her is torn and dirty. A long scrape and mottle bruises cover half her face like a grotesque carnival mask. Through the holes in her clothes they can see more: on her legs, on her arms. An angry red mark snakes around her throat. She holds her wrist gingerly across her stomach.
It's wrong. Everything about it is wrong. To Sherlock and John, nothing is more gut wrenchingly disconcerting than having their invincible girl standing before them like a broken marionette. Sherlock reaches out, delicately moving his hand as if the tips of his fingers could disrupt the light and send her away.
She flinches back, hard. The expression on her face doesn't change. She stares straight ahead.
"I need you to call Mycroft and tell him to be here in twenty minutes," she says levelly. "And John, if you would, my shoulder…" he does it before she can finish, grabbing her and popping it in so she doesn't have time to stiffen.
"Thanks. I'm gonna go…" they can see her trembling on the edge, the place where her words fall away and the white pills come out. "I'm going to go bathe. Call me when Mycroft is here."
She escapes as quickly as she can. It's nearly impossible to avoid her reflection when the mirror stretches above the sink, so she bathes in the dark, sinking into the tub and closing her eyes as if the water were a sea.
The water stretches, glints under the high sun. Holiday stands perfectly still, unable to believe that someone can exist on a planet twenty-three years and not see something so endless. Sherlock gives an impatient huff.
"Oh hush," she shoulder bumps him, not looking away. "You probably saw it loads as a kid, seaside vacations and all that."
"Unfortunately."
Grinning she asks if there are pictures somewhere of baby Sherlock toddling around on a beach, and he assures her they're all gone.
"So we have an hour to kill, right?"
He glances down to see her unbuttoning her shirt. He tries to ignore the slight swell of breast where it curves into her bra, but ends up staring at it.
"What are you doing?"
"Come on, Sherlock. How long has it been since we've had a break?"
"Java."
"Yeah, you had a day off in Java. I was in Dallas, remember? I haven't stopped since Samarkand." She glances around the beach. It's still too early for anyone too be out; the sun's hardly risen. "Come swimming with me."
"Allie, love, Mycroft's here," Mary calls through the door.
Holiday moans and slides farther into the bath. "Yeah, I'll be right there." Pain throbs over her entire body but there's nothing to do but stand and pull on clothes. She stares at the door, trying to hear through the silence that's fallen around her. She doesn't hear the door click shut or the floorboards creaking under her feet.
All eyes turn to her as she enters the living room, Mary says something. They watch the girl's eyebrows crease as she tilts her head, mouth moving uselessly. She's been un-animated, a puppet put back in the box. Her gaze moves over them: Sherlock, John, Mary, then finally, Mycroft.
Like flipping a switch her demeanor changes. Light snaps back into her eyes, white changes to red.
"You fucking idiot!"