A.N.- This story is on a roll, holy crap! (Wheat roll, please… oh God I need to shut up.)
SheWhoScrawls- Thank you so much! I'm glad someone identifies with the characters (that's been my goal all along- to make them as realistically human as possible XD). I'm sorry though, I have those too and it's definitely no tea party sometimes. SuperWhoLock for the win! XD Thanks so much!
Em- Yay! All the small fluff pieces are adding up into one big cuddly teddy bear of feels!
ZTZ- Thank you!
**NOTE** A lot of this chapter was suggested by shadajhoserj, joint effort! If you guys have any ideas feel free to send them in.
shadajhoserj- Thank you for all your help on this chapter, you totally kicked my writer's block to the curb!
Carry On My Wayward Son is STUCK in my head. (Doesn't help that I keep playing it…) What do you think? Should I do a Supernatural fic next? XD
The Dame of Baker Street, Ch. 25
Madeline woke and glanced at the clock in the kitchen.
"Oh my God, I'm late!" She muttered before trying to roll over. She failed and fell out of Sherlock's chair with a thud onto the cold floor. She popped back up a second later and almost scalded her nose on the mug of burnt-smelling coffee resting on the table beside where she'd been sleeping with a note attached to it. It smelled toxic, but Madeline still smiled at the gesture as she stumbled to her flat and snatched the note without reading it before grabbing her things and racing outside.
No sooner had she stepped outside than she was blinded by the repetitive flashes of bulbs and a cacophony of shouts that assaulted her as soon as the door opened. Madeline spun around and darted back inside, slamming the front door behind her and leaning against it while the lights continued to flash outside. She pulled the note out of her pocket and smirked dryly when she actually read it:
I'd advise you to go out the back. Best- SH
She huffed and stuffed the note into her pocket again, then crept out into the rubbish alleyway and kept going until she emerged at the end of Baker Street behind the row of buildings and could clearly see the throng of newspaper press and reporters crowding outside the apartments and all but breaking the door down. Madeline winced and took quick, short steps to St. Bart's with her head tucked between her shoulders and her scarf wrapped around her noose and lower face like a thug.
Sherlock was busy fumigating something rancid by the time she got to the lab. Madeline had to hold her breath as she passed him to get to the window and crack it open.
"What is that?" She spluttered, Sherlock kept working and didn't turn when he answered her.
"Glue," He said monotonously. Madeline wrinkled her nose and leaned out the window for fresh air. She saw a small group of people on the sidewalk below standing outside St. Bart's. One of them pointed upwards and swung a camera up to face her. Madeline jerked her head back inside, banging the base of her skull against the window sash in the process.
"Ouch," She muttered, scowling and rubbing the back of her neck. Sherlock was looking at Madeline curiously when she turned back around.
"There are reporters outside." Madeline explained, Sherlock shrugged and turned back to the exhuming glue in the tray in front of Sherlock.
"You didn't get the note I left?" He said snidely, "It was blatantly obvious."
"No, genius." She countered, "I mean they're outside of Bart's, too." Sherlock groaned and leaned his cheek on one hand.
"I thought I was careful enough on the way here. Someone must have seen us leaving the pub and alerted the media." He complained. "Now all the normal people will see washed out photographs of my everyday life on their mobiles or in the paper. Brilliant." Madeline waved her hand in front of her nose to circulate the glue fumes away from her mouth.
"Yeah well we can go out through the ambulance bay if we have to." She said. "And I did get your note," She added. "It was- helpful. And the coffee was a nice gesture."
"There was no coffee." Sherlock said indifferently, prodding the greyish lump in the tray and adding something to it that made the substance more gelatinous. Madeline pressed her lips together and "m-hmmed" before going to collect her paperwork for the day. Her first job was to decode a dispute about who was the rightful father of a little boy with blue eyes and AB blood type. She sighed and sketched out a quick Punnett Square based on the blood test analyses she'd been given. She tapped the pen against her temple and wrote down the percentage calculations for the possible heredities, but jumped when she sensed something close behind her.
"What are you doing?" Sherlock asked quietly. Madeline swatted at him over her shoulder and kept calculating the genetics.
"Making a Punnett Square." She said absently.
"What for?"
"It's what normal people do for genetics. I can't do big squares in my head like you probably can, there are too many letters and it's too important to mess up." Madeline murmured, nudging Sherlock away with her shoulder before she turned to the lab tubes and her computer. She slid three of the tubes into the microfuge capsule chamber and let the machine spin.
"So did you figure anything out about Moriarty?" Madeline asked, Sherlock's attempt at a pleasant face dropped into a scowl at the mention of the criminal's name. He sat back in front of the dish of glue and stirred it slightly, but only succeeded in dragging the gelatinous mass around the plate all at once. Sherlock wrinkled his nose in distaste and turned off the power under the dish before steepling his fingers under his chin and scowling at the tabletop.
"I have ideas, I just haven't had a sturdy lead yet." He said. Madeline cocked her head at him and spun around from the machine.
"You don't have anything do you,"
"Of course I do." Sherlock snapped. "I always do." Madeline clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth and leaned against the counter.
"Not this time. I don't think you can solve this one." She said solemnly. Sherlock snapped his head up and glared at her.
"You don't think so?" He said bitterly. Madeline winced at the way her words had come across then turned and took the tubes out of the microfuge chamber and hauled one of the microscopes onto the counter. Then she spooled the DNA and made sure to put it on a fresh slide before speaking to Sherlock again.
"That's not how I meant to say it." She said, Sherlock ignored her and went about trying to discreetly dump the failed glue experiment into Madeline's sink. She grabbed the smoking mess in a paper towel and gingerly carried it to the bio hazard waste bin and threw it away. "Seriously," Madeline continued, "You know what I meant." Sherlock avoided looking at her childishly and nodded. She smiled faintly and turned to the scope. She could hear her neighbor rummaging through her supply cabinets but ignored him politely. When she looked up from the first slide to make another he'd gathered bottles of chemicals in his arms and had splayed them across the counter. Madeline saw bromine and antimony amid the junk and curiously looked over. The detective ground up antimony and then poured bromine into a large flask. The brown gas swirled out and fell to the bottom of the vial first, then the liquid part of the element followed.
"A density of more than one." Madeline observed, Sherlock shushed her to demand silence and pinched some of the antimony between his fingers. He sprinkled the antimony into the flask and swirled the glass in his hand slightly. Madeline was both surprised and delighted to see a flame spark in the base of the flask, then go out.
"That's amazing!" She said.
"Chemistry one-oh-one." The detective said smugly. "I just needed to perform an experiment I knew would work." Madeline prodded his shoulder eagerly.
"Do it again." She said. Sherlock smirked and dropped another piece of antimony into the flask and tilted the glass so Madeline could see the coal that sprang to life in the bottom of the flask. She stared at it in an almost childish awe and reached for the antimony, but Sherlock slid the bowl away from her.
"Calm down, it's as if you never took a chemistry course." He chided her.
"I did, but that's just cool." Madeline responded, grinning at him before going back to her own work.
. . .
"I've got it!" Sherlock shouted, Madeline and John could hear him all the way from 221 C and gave each other nervous glances as they heard the detective come hurrying down the staircase like a stampede. He burst into 221 C like a hurricane, waving his hands frantically and wearing a rare smile.
"I've solved it!" He shouted again,
"What, the case?" Madeline asked, Sherlock spun around and shook his hands out like they were wet.
"No, no, no. Forget the case. Moriarty!" Madeline immediately sat forward to listen, and John was transfixed.
"It wasn't him in the first place!" Sherlock continued, not missing a beat. "There was no possible way Moriarty could have survived the shot he gave himself to the head, so it had to be someone posing as him. Just from looking at the mental images that I have from Moriarty's supposed 'return' it's obviously not his style. Even the image itself was shoddy- and don't say that was on purpose," Sherlock said, pointing his hand at John without looking. The doctor closed his mouth and swallowed his objection before settling back into his seat. "My deduction is that there is a commonplace hacker, some common lowlife who thought it would be trivial to stage Jim Moriarty's rebirth. He most likely saw us at the pub and decided to hack into the televisions in the area." Sherlock continued.
"I saw it on my TV, too." John interjected, "And I was on the other side of London."
"Fine, then the hacker bought or pirated serious software and wormed his way into televisions all over London." Sherlock said irately, waving his hand dismissively in front of his face. Madeline frowned but kept her objections to herself. Mrs. Hudson made her way down the stairs to 221 C to see what all the shouting was about, and Sherlock surprised her by spinning the old woman around and kissing her cheek before dashing back upstairs and crowing to himself.
"He's in a bit of a mood, isn't he?" Mrs. Hudson marveled, touching her hand to her cheek. Madeline shrugged and John looked up to the ceiling, where they could hear Sherlock's footsteps moving merrily about above their heads.
"Apparently he's solved another one." The landlady said to no one in particular. Madeline bit the inside of her cheek and took her medicine, hoping the detective's unimpressive and flimsy suspicion trying to pass as truth was true.
. . .
The media was outside the Baker Street apartments constantly. Their numbers would wane around mealtimes and later at night, but it was still always a hassle to leave the building to go to work or even to the supermarket without being harassed by reporters of cameras and microphones. All of London was attuned to the news that Sherlock Holmes had returned, and unfortunately as the only other tenant in Baker Street Madeline found more than one unflattering picture of herself in a newspaper or tabloid, sometimes with even more unflattering headlines above her head questioning her involvement, mental state, and relationship with Sherlock.
Nothing had happened, still. Sherlock was still as aloof as he'd always been; but Madeline would notice sometimes that he'd brush against her uncharacteristically or point something out while she was working alongside him in her lab. In a way she was almost grateful, if he'd morphed into some violently romantic hero it would have been an unpleasant change in demeanor; and Madeline wasn't sure how she would even deal with someone who openly gave affection all the time.
John became increasingly busy with work, and he'd been dropping hints during his visits that he was planning on proposing to Mary. Madeline did her best to give him tips when he asked for advice when dealing with women, and she did her best to answer them considering John had never held a relationship for very long (although that was partly due to Sherlock getting rid of them).
Sherlock seemed dead set on his theory about Moriarty's supposed resurrection, and he finally allowed Madeline to leave the slight house arrest he'd placed her under. John was a different matter seeing as he lived across town; but Sherlock finally quit badgering him to stay away from shady areas anyway.
"Screw these," Madeline groaned, knocking her temple with her fist out of aggravation. She had a Punnett Square drawn up in front of her with four rows on the top and four rows on the side. There were sixteen empty squares waiting impatiently to be filled with genetic possibilities, but Madeline wasn't having any luck. The letters split apart before her eyes then jumped back together like they were dancing. She rubbed at her eyes and fought back a yawn before going back to muttering at the Punnett Square under her breath.
"Could you be any louder?" Sherlock called from one of the other tables. Madeline groaned and scribbled all the squares out with her pen, then dropped her face into her arm. "If you'd eat and sleep more instead of spending nine-tenths of your day at the hospital you would have a better mental stabilization." Sherlock pointed out.
"Shut up," Madeline muttered from the crook of her arm. Sherlock stood and walked past her to grab one of the lamps with a neck that bent as easily as a snake's. He carried it back to his section of the table and made sure to let the metal base squeal on the tabletop. Madeline winced at the noise and Sherlock went about plugging the lamp in.
"I'll work that Putting Square-"
"Punnett Square." Madeline mumbled. Sherlock rolled his eyes.
"That. I'll work it out for you if I can use your lamp." The detective offered emotionlessly. Madeline shrugged.
"You'd just use it anyway."
"I'm attempting to be helpful." Sherlock said, crossing his arms and regretting the decision in the first place. "Tell me the letters." He demanded. Madeline groaned and rolled her head to the side so he could hear her mumble the capital and lowercase genetics. Sherlock closed his eyes for a second and tapped his fingers rhythmically on the table before opening his eyes again.
"You've got a three-fourth's chance of blue eyes and blonde hair, the last fourth is green recessive and brown dominant with brown hair." He said suddenly before clicking the lamp on and going back to whatever he was working on. Madeline roused herself and scribbled the percentages down on the margins of the paper before swearing and deciding to go home for the day.
"Remember to eat something." Sherlock called after her.
"Remember to avoid fangirls through the ambulance bay." Madeline retorted as she wrapped her scarf around her neck and turned her coat up against the wind.
. . .
"Miss Carver,"
"What."
"Miss Carver, I need you to do something for me."
"What. Do you. Want." She groaned.
"You need to come to the police station. Right away." Madeline rolled over in bed and dragged a hand down her face.
"What fo-or?" She complained. It took a second before Sherlock's voice crackled through her phone again.
"I'm being held at the police department. The officers said I need someone to, um- collect me." He said.
"Goddamnit what did you do?" Madeline hissed.
"Don't get angry with me," Sherlock snapped back, "They found me in a drug den and subsequently arrested me." Madeline sat upright in bed and tried to clear the haze of sleep from her head permanently.
"What were you even doing in a drug den?" She said lowly. She could hear Sherlock sigh on the other end.
"It was for a case. Would you just hurry up and get here?" He said. Madeline groaned to herself and rolled out of bed.
"Don't tell me to hurry up, Sherlock Holmes. It's my day off and I'm half inclined to go back to sleep and let you stay there for the afternoon." She growled.
"No, no, no. I'd appreciate it if you'd come and get me. There are some unsavory people here who recognize me, and unfortunately I've been restrained multiple times already." Sherlock said quickly. Madeline sighed and slipped into normal clothes before going outside and catching a cab.
"I cannot believe you." She growled, scribbling her name on the papers presented to her and pocketing the ID she'd been forced to show. Sherlock smiled at her tightly in her makeshift outfit of sweatpants and a screen-printed shirt with a cartoon character on it.
"It's for a case." He said with a shrug.
"For a case." Madeline repeated, "I am about to hit you in the nose, don't you dare start thinking about your case." Sherlock gave the bobby a smirk as he unlocked the handcuffs from around Sherlock's wrists but the expression disappeared when Madeline latched onto his arm and dragged him from the station to hail a cab.
"What were you even doing in a drug den?" She fretted, pushing Sherlock towards the cab insistently even though he tried to shake her off. "Get the hell in there, I'm not happy." She snapped when he turned to make a biting remark. The detective compliantly sat as far away from Madeline as he could and stared out the window absently.
"Seriously, just go- wash off." Madeline said when they'd reached Baker Street. Sherlock sent her a patronizing look before setting off for upstairs. Madeline rubbed at her face and checked her watch, it wasn't even ten o'clock yet. She returned to her flat feeling like a mother who had to pick her child up from after school detention for delinquency.
Which wasn't too far from the literal situation.
Madeline collapsed face first back onto her bed and was about to fall asleep when someone knocked on her door.
"Come in." She muttered into the pillow. Someone coughed outside and seemed to be fiddling with the door, something John, Mrs. Hudson, or Sherlock wouldn't do. She sat up right and realized the sound wasn't coming from her door, it was coming from her window. Madeline grabbed the nearest heavy object- a book- and slowly crept into her living room. A dirty figure spun around to face her and bared what looked like a lock pick at her. Madeline shrieked and struck the intruder a sturdy blow to the side of the face with the book. The stranger crumpled to the floor in a heap, and Madeline leapt back nervously.
"Sherlock!" She shouted to the ceiling, still clutching her book like a weapon and not daring to take her eyes off of the intruder. "Sherlock!" She shouted more loudly. She heard footsteps dart down the stairs and a second later Sherlock was at her door, wearing his blue bathrobe over a shirt and trousers. The slightly concerned (only slightly, mind) look on his face evaporated when he saw Madeline standing over the thief and ready to drop a textbook on his head.
"I think I killed him." She said in a mortified whisper.
"Well now you've done it." The detective snapped, striding over and snatching the book from Madeline. He prodded the man on her carpet gingerly with his foot, and the stranger moaned. "Brilliant, now we have to carry him upstairs." He complained, reaching down to grab the intruder by the hair. After a spectacular row about how to properly carry someone Sherlock grudgingly agreed to loop his arms under the stranger's and Madeline grabbed his feet. They awkwardly stumbled up the stairs to 221 B with the man swinging dangerously between them. Every step or so they would accidentally run him into the wall or the banister and he would wince, but they finally made it into the flat and deposited the intruder onto the carpet.
"Who is he?" Madeline whispered, even though the man hadn't regained consciousness yet. Sherlock rolled his eyes and massaged his temples with one hand.
"He's a member of my homeless network- no, I'm not going to elaborate." He snapped, obviously still irate that she'd knocked out one of his "informants". When the man finally began to wake up again Madeline couldn't help but take a small step back. He looked threatening in every sense of the word, with scars and scrapes all over his face and arms that were covered with an explicit layer of grime and dirt.
Don't judge people by scars. She reminded herself almost bitterly. Sherlock took his seat in his chair and Madeline stood awkwardly by the couch as the stranger pushed himself to his feet and started to talk with the detective.
"You said 221-"
"Yes, 221 B not C. I didn't ask you to terrorize my neighbor." Sherlock returned dryly, the man shrugged and pulled a dirty piece of paper from his pocket and passed it off to the detective. Sherlock's eyes crinkled slightly in subtle excitement and he pocketed the paper and replaced the empty spot in the stranger's hand with three pound notes. The intruder wrinkled his nose at the pay and stuffed the bills into his pocket before nodding his head to Sherlock and rounding on Madeline.
"And what about my pay from you?" He demanded.
"Sorry?" She said, taking a tiny shift backwards.
"You hit me in the bloody head, you've gotta pay that off." The stranger snapped. Madeline looked around him and saw Sherlock watching with a bored look on his face, but still alert. The man took a threatening step forward and Madeline swung her arms around, catching the man again in the head with a book. He fell to the floor limply with a groan.
"Will you quit beating my informants senseless?" Sherlock said, standing from his chair and confiscating the book Madeline had picked up from the coffee table. He was about to say something else when he grew very still and quiet. Sherlock quickly darted to the window and growled quietly.
"Leave the murder weapon and help me move him to the bedroom." He snapped to Madeline.
"What? Why?" She asked.
"Shut up and hurry," Sherlock said hurriedly. "Mycroft is here." That got her motivated. They staggered down the hall and deposited the stranger less-than-gracefully in John's former room and shut the door. When they made it back into the living room Mycroft was waiting smugly for them in John's chair.
"Not what it looks like." Sherlock said indifferently as he nonchalantly took a seat across from his brother and Madeline walked to the door. She looked over her shoulder at the two brothers and decided against her better judgment to stay and listen to their conversation. She coolly picked up the book she'd just beat a man unconscious with and settled into a corner of the couch with the pages hiding her face. Mycroft raised his eyebrows pointedly at her and cleared his throat.
"She'll be fine, if anything she'll referee the fistfights." Sherlock said nonchalantly. Madeline couldn't see, but she heard a paper rustle from across the room and guessed Mycroft was showing Sherlock something. Everything was quiet for a few minutes until Sherlock addressed her.
"Do you hear that, Miss Carver? I think Mrs. Hudson might be having a stroke. Go check on her and make sure she didn't spill any tea on her frocks." He said pointedly. Madeline bit the inside of her cheek and made her way out of the flat, closing the door behind her. She had only gone down about one of the stairs when she heard Sherlock say coldly, "There, are you satisfied now?" An invisible rope around Madeline's waist was tugging her back to the door before she knew it, and she knelt quietly outside the door to eavesdrop on the Holmes' apparently heated discussion.
"So a drug den. How low you've fallen." Mycroft said mockingly. "The embarrassing part is it showed up straightaway on our monitors and you didn't contact me beforehand for help."
"Really? I thought you would have been embarrassed to admit relation to me." Sherlock observed snidely.
"Only when you're being brash." Mycroft returned with equal gall. Madeline bit back a small laugh at the British catfight ten feet away from her. The urge disappeared, though when she heard Mycroft's voice jump into a businesslike manner.
"You don't really believe he's gone, do you?"
"Of course not. That was just to dissuade John and Miss Carver." Sherlock's voice dropped to a lower tone that made the back of Madeline's neck itch. "So I want you to be able to protect them. Assign a constant bodyguard if you have to." The younger Holmes demanded. Madeline could hear Mycroft's umbrella thump against the floor periodically, showing how displeased he was with the proposal.
"I'm not in the habit of giving out men to protect people we don't need." Mycroft said.
"That's irrelevant, if you want something from me you're going to have to give a little brother." Sherlock snapped back. Madeline could envision Mycroft's steady smirk aimed at the detective.
"Come now, aren't you capable of protecting them? It's like buying a pet, if you can't take care of them you can't keep them." He pointed out.
"I don't need to take care of them. I just need them to be monitored while I track him down." Sherlock retorted, Madeline felt like there was ice water searing in her veins. So he'd lied to her. Moriarty was alive.
"Need and want are two different things, Sherlock." Mycroft reprimanded sharply, and from the creaking of the leather Madeline could tell he'd risen from the chair. "You do realize if you keep showing soft spots he's going to exploit them." The older brother said a little more quietly, "Do actually watch your step." Madeline scrambled away from the door and had made it halfway down the stairs when she heard the door open behind her. She continued down the stairs but stopped at the bottom. Mycroft stepped past her with a smirk that showed he knew she'd been listening.
"Please keep him out of prison, this time." He said snidely before opening his umbrella to the misting rain outside and leaving. Madeline bit the inside of her cheek and debated going back to her flat, but trudged back to 221 B, dragged by the rope around her waist. She could hear Sherlock picking at his violin furiously inside and slowly nudged the door open. He ignored her and kept on acoustically playing the violin like a small mandolin. She sat in John's chair and awkwardly crossed her legs and uncrossed them to try and make herself comfortable.
"So what leads did you get from your… escapade today?" Madeline asked, trying to initiate conversation with the detective. He frowned and tuned the violin a little farther, and Madeline was afraid the strings would snap from the tension he was exerting on them. Finally he laid the instrument across his lap and acknowledged her.
"It was a lead from the man you beat twice today." He said coldly, and it occurred briefly to Madeline that he'd been tuning the violin to calm himself down from his confrontation with his brother before talking to her. She nodded silently and kept listening. "Apparently the dead man was a pharmacist, and one of the men in that specific den had been ranting about someone by the same name about a week prior to the murder." Sherlock continued, "So I went undercover to try and find him."
"Did you?" Madeline asked. Sherlock canted his eyes at her and smirked slightly.
"Of course, but when the police got there after I'd let them know they arrested me as well. Apparently they can't do their jobs no matter what the condition." He added.
"You didn't- take anything while you were there, did you?" Madeline asked cautiously. Sherlock shrugged and picked up his violin again, tugging at the strings cautiously.
"I might have injected one or two syringes of something into myself, but it's worn off already." The detective said dismissively. Madeline rubbed at her face exasperatedly.
"You're stupid." She said angrily, "Seriously, too much of that can stop your heart okay? Don't ever inject something into yourself again, hear me? Goddamn…" She fumed quietly. "And while I'm still mad at you- why didn't you tell John and me that Jim was still alive?" She snapped. Sherlock didn't look the least bit surprised that she'd overheard the conversation, just a little uncomfortable.
"You didn't need to know." He said finally. "It's something for me to worry about and deal with, not for you and John to fret over."
"For someone who claims to not be all good you sure put a lot of effort into being the hero." Madeline muttered, Sherlock cut her a glare and folded his arms with his violin trapped underneath them against his chest. "I don't see why you couldn't trust us with the information, but Mycroft is on a first to know basis." She continued.
"Maybe I didn't tell you because I knew you'd overreact or panic." Sherlock snapped back. Madeline was about to make a biting comment she might regret later when her alarm on her phone went off as an indication to take her medicine. She turned it off and cordially bid Sherlock a good afternoon, then made her way back to her flat to grab her medications. Madeline chased the rancid pills down with water while Sherry paced underneath her feet with her tail brushing Madeline's calves. She could feel the tense knot in her stomach begin to loosen itself slightly; and could also hear the man she and Sherlock had stashed in John's bedroom waking up and stumbling down the stairs and out the front door, swearing like a sailor. Madeline collapsed onto her bed, determined to sleep for the rest of the day.
"Hell of a day off," She said, then fell asleep.
A.N.- Yay! It's come to light that Jim's back.
Reviews and plot ideas are welcome.
The last half of this chapter is composed mainly of shadajoserj's ideas. Go check out her works!
Thanks!