It was impossible to comprehend that less than five hours had passed since she'd stepped into Philippa Greene's kitchen, yet when Thea rode up to the bike
sheds outside her school's oval, classes seemed to still be in session. Last period on Wednesdays was Math B for Lisa and International Cultures for Thea and
Marcus. The elective had sounded somewhat interesting but was, unfortunately, in actual fact outrageously lame; so it came as no surprise that Marcus was
settled on a crate behind the bike stands, smoking.
"Beastie." He gave her a nod as she dismounted and sat next to him.
"Marcus."
"Are you alright?" he asked. "You look kinda pale."
"Do you think I could kip in the shed for a few nights?" Thea asked.
Marcus looked at her strangely.
"Just a week, possibly two."
"Why?"
"Just need some space." It had seemed like a reasonable request when it occurred to her on the ride over, but even Thea had to admit it sounded a little
stupid now.
"You practically live alone," Marcus pointed out.
"But only practically," Thea sighed.
"Beastie, you're my very good buddy and all," Marcus said with a lopsided grin, "but no. You can't sleep in the shed for a fortnight."
"Why?" she whined, though more because it seemed bad form to accept his perfectly sensible answer immediately.
"Because firstly, my mum would notice within three hours and completely lose her marbles; secondly, you'd probably freeze your ring off, and thirdly, I'd likely
get arrested for harbouring a child runaway."
Thea groaned and leaned heavily against the bike shed, banging her head on the corrugated iron.
"Concussing yourself won't be helpful," Marcus said.
"I know…" she sighed. "My whole life is a load of bollocks, Marcus."
"Oh dear," he chuckled. "So young and so jaded already."
"Piss off," she snapped, though his impersonating old people never failed to make her grin a little. "Can I have one of these?"
Marcus looked at the cigarette in his hand and back to her.
"Sure. Would you like a beer with that?" He smirked.
"I'm having an exceptionally shitty day, Marcus," Thea said tiredly, "and I could really use a little epinephrine. Seeing as you won't grant me asylum it's the
least you can do, really."
"I don't have any epinephrine, sadly."
"Nicotine releases epinephrine, you dolt," she sighed.
"You can have precisely one drag," said Marcus and held out his cigarette to her. "You won't like it, I guarantee."
Thea took the cigarette from his outstretched hand, brought it to her lips and inhaled carefully. While it was a little bit burny, it was by no means entirely
unpleasant. Today was the kind of day, Thea felt, that warranted her first cigarette. She ignored Marcus snapping fingers and took another drag, watching the
smoke drift from her mouth in a thick, acrid cloud. On her fifth drag a black car pulled up beside them.
"Ah…for the love of God," Thea moaned.
"What?" Marcus asked.
"You haven't got any weed on you, do you?" Thea hissed, barely moving her lips.
"No…why?" His eyes narrowed at her and then widened as two black suited, ear-piece wearing gentlemen emerged from the vehicle and made a beeline for
them. "What the fuck-"
"That's quite enough adventure for one day, Miss Holmes. If you please."
Thea threw her cigarette on the ground and stood.
"As for you, Mister Havisham…" Marcus' jaw dropped slightly when one of the goons addressed him by name "…you may want to reconsider supplying minors
with regulated substances. Unless you wish to find yourself in a court of law."
"You what?" Marcus asked weakly.
"Leave him alone," Thea said, rolling her eyes. "It's only a cigarette. And look, I'm coming, see?"
"After you."
"See you tomorrow, Marcus."
"Uhm…right…see ya, beastie."
Thea gave him a 'whatchagonnado' shrug and climbed into the back of the car.
()
"Thank you so much for freaking out my friend."
Attack seemed the best defence, especially considering her uncle looked supremely annoyed.
"Sit," he snapped.
Huffing, she sat. For a moment they regarded each other across Mycroft's desk, Thea doing her very best to match his steely gaze while she considered her
options. They were depressingly limited, now that the practice shed was off the list of possible accommodations. Entertaining the fantasy of squatting in Marcus
backyard had been amusing and it had distracted her from the reality of her situation. Now, however, in the confines of her uncle's impeccably tidy office, it
came crashing back over her with a vengeance. This was it. Last stop. All spirits of attack went out of her.
"Can I stay with you for a bit?" she murmured.
"I beg your pardon?"
Thea sighed.
"May I please make use of your guest room?"
"And why would that be necessary?" Mycroft asked.
"It's the middle of the term, so I can hardly leave town," Thea answered, attempting to sound calm and reasonable. "And I'm not staying with him."
Admittedly, a small crack in her voice let her down towards the end of the sentence.
"Don't be dramatic," her uncle sighed.
"I'm not being dramatic," she said, irritated at the wetness threatening both her voice and eyes. "Come on, uncle Mycroft, please? I won't be any trouble. You
won't even know I'm there."
"We both know from experience that that is blatantly untrue," he said snidely.
"Surely we can agree that the circumstances differ."
"How so?"
"I'm asking for a start," Thea struggled to keep from snapping at him. "And if you should kindly deign to grant me asylum, so to speak, I'll be there on my own
volition. And I'm, you know, older. I don't require supervision."
"Fair points, I suppose," Mycroft allowed.
"So, yes?"
"Just out of curiosity…what if I said no?"
"I don't know…" Thea suddenly felt very tired, "…I'd sleep in the Arches or something and then you'd send your goons for me anyway, so there's no point in
denying me, is there? Don't toy with me, please. I've had a trying day."
Mycroft studied her for a moment, his face giving nothing away. Thea was not worried, not really, she knew he wouldn't turn her down. She just hoped he'd
skip the plethora of hoops he could make her jump through for his own amusement.
"Would you like the car to stop of at Baker Street so you can get your school supplies and such?"
No hoops. It occurred to Thea that she might seem more shaken than she realised.
"Could you maybe just send someone round there later?" she asked cautiously. "I write them a list…would that be at all possible?"
"This is ridiculous."
"No, it's not." Thea looked at him with dangerously blurring vision. "Please?"
"Very well."
Wonders never ceased.
"Thank you," Thea whispered.
"I shall see you for dinner, I suppose," her uncle said resignedly. "Stay out of my study."
()
Thea was moving broccoli around her plate, acutely aware that Mycroft had done the unthinkable and left work early. Although he had spoken very little, he
was observing her closely, making her feel hideously self-conscious. She'd spent the hours between arriving at his place and being summoned to eat lying on
the bed in the guest room, attempting to review and file the day's input.
Her mother now had quarters of her own in Thea's castle, a wide open circular room with a large bookshelf and a kettle, so she could make tea in the morning.
Thea had also cracked open the door to her father's wing of the castle, but the chaos and disarray – suggestive of a level 3 earthquake at least – had been so
overwhelming she'd abandoned all forays in that direction. However, a distinct banging and raucous if unintelligible callings from her basement had eventually
wound her up enough to get the hell out of her castle.
So for the most part, Thea had just remained prone on the covers, examining the hollow ache in her chest with as much detachment as she could muster.
"Regression is an interesting coping mechanism," her uncle's voice startled her.
She looked at her plate and realised that she had stood the florets of broccoli upright, lining a path of pureed cauliflower. All she needed now was a couple of
fish fingers perhaps a salt shaker as a backdrop, then she could be changing the guard at Buckingham Palace…Christopher Robin went down with Alice…only
she was much too old for fish fingers and the fillets of whatever fish was served would not make good guards at all…Jesus, she needed sleep.
"May I be excused?"
"Certainly not."
Thea closed her eyes and ran her hand along the edge of the table cloth, counting the stitches in the lining like rosary beads.
"You know," she said slowly once she'd run out of table cloth, "you were mistaken."
"In regards to what?" Mycroft asked.
"You said not matter how much information I compiled, things would remain fundamentally the same," Thea quoted.
"I fear this is going to degenerate into philosophising rather swiftly," her uncle said with a pained expression.
"You were wrong," Thea insisted. "Excessively wrong."
"Nothing in your life has tangibly changed in the last…" Mycroft checked his watch, "…ten hours."
"Everything has changed," she said darkly.
She could see her uncle's jaw clench and relax, clench and relax, his fingers rubbing at his napkin as though to investigate its texture.
"All circumstance remains the same," he said. "What you are experiencing is not change but a shift of perspective. If we are to have a conversation about this,
I must ask you refrain from catastrophizing. Not even a nuclear apocalypse would change everything."
"Fine," Thea gritted her teeth. "My subjective truth has changed."
"Don't be preposterous," Mycroft sighed, exasperation fraying his crisp edges. "You haven't processed your new information sufficiently to arrive at any kind of
conclusion. A state of confusion does not equal a redefinition of one's truth. At the very most it's a potential pathway."
"To what?"
"Clarity, ideally."
Thea pushed her plate away.
"It's all perfectly clear, unfortunately," she said, gloom descending over her like liquid tar poured from a beaker.
"Enlighten me." Her uncle was tapping the side of his raised water glass.
"You don't even care," Thea pointed out. "You're just going to berate me for expressing myself inadequately."
"I do not berate you," Mycroft said calmly. "I merely want your speech to mirror your intellect."
"So you don't care."
"Caring is not an advantage," he recited and Thea groaned. "But I do want to know. What is oh so perfectly clear?"
"That he had to take me," Thea snapped. "Because there were no other parties staking a claim. He couldn't weasel his way out of it."
Mycroft cocked an eyebrow.
"It's true though, isn't it?" Thea balked at his unspoken yet blatant scepticism. "He couldn't very well deny his part in the whole disaster, not when he was
actually present. And leaving me on a doorstep would have been Victorian even by his standards."
"Victorian perhaps," her uncle conceded. "Not to mention quite illegal. And we both know how very seriously my brother takes the law."
"Are you actually being sarcastic right now?"
"Your melodramatics are at least as aggravating to me as my sarcasm is to you." Mycroft shook his head, so slightly it could have been mistaken for a spasm.
"As for my brother's weaselling abilities – they are second to none and you know it."
"But-"
"Is this really the revelation you take the most issue with?" her uncle went on. "The fact that it was not his original intention to raise you on his own? Because,
if I recall correctly – and I'm rather confident I do -, that is in no way new information. It is even part of that little origin story of yours. Why would it suddenly
upset you?"
"Because he didn't want any of this…" Thea could feel her anger tilting towards something far more dangerous… abject misery.
"No one wants to be the remaining parent after a death in child birth, Alethea. But simply because he was not planning of being a traditional parent does not
mean-"
"But she did," Thea interrupted, her voice cracking.
"Pardon?"
"Agnes, she was planning on that." Mycroft's eyebrows lowered and narrowed at this. "I wasn't meant to be her experiment, did you know that? I was just
meant to be her daughter. She bought books for me."
"Oh my, I see…"
"No, you don't see," Thea snapped. "You don't have a bloody clue. She wanted to be my mother so much she almost drove away her girlfriend. She wanted to
be my mother so much she went and found a more or less random stranger to make me because she wouldn't take no for an answer."
Her uncle opened his mouth, but she barged on.
"She was going to take me to the ocean…" Salty water was once more present and Thea wondered briefly if she'd suddenly turned into what Lisa termed a
'crier'. "She was going to do all these really ordinary things with me and she was looking forward to it. She'd have gone to parent evenings and school concerts
and read to me…she'd have made me bloody sandwiches…I'd have had…"
"This is futile," Mycroft said somewhat softly but loud enough to penetrate her renewed sobbing. "This type of thinking is what drives people insane and I mean
that literally, do you hear me? What might have been is irrelevant and has no bearing on any part of reality. There a countless things which might have been
and you will never know how your circumstances would have been influenced by them. It is unknowable. To claim otherwise would be submitting to shameless
flights of fancy."
"But I was so close," Thea cried. "I was one successful medical intervention away from having a normal home! With an actual parent! My life would have been
so much…"
"Better?" her uncle interjected, making it sound like a dirty word. "Easier?"
"Yes!" She stared at him with red, hot eyes. "I live with a crazy person who thinks I'm his science experiment! What kind of person fathers a child for science?"
"I fail to see how a lonely and confused girl, barely out of her teens, bringing a child into the world with the expectation that this child should be able to
compensate for the loss of her entire family is somehow better." Mycroft held eye contact mercilessly.
"You don't know!" Thea shouted at him, pounding her fist on the table hard enough to topple the broccoli trees.
"Au contraire, you don't know," Mycroft said in a tone that brokered no argument. "I, on the other hand, have met said girl and therefore do know."
Thea opened her mouth, yet found herself speechless. For perhaps the first time, her mouth seemingly had trouble keeping up with her brain. There had been
a number of retorts ready to be launched, but Thea was stopped in her tracks by the sinking feeling that none of them were truly applicable.
"I have to think about this," she said hoarsely. "May I be excused now?"
For a heartbeat, something very like approval flickered in her uncle's eyes.
"You may."
()
So Thea thought.
To anyone watching her she appeared to be doing all manner of things – riding to school, eating lunch, pouring over chemistry experiments with Marcus and
Lisa… - but while she was physically present and going through the motions of everyday activities, she was more or less on autopilot. Her autopilot was quite
efficient, so much so it remained undetected for days.
"Thea? Thea!"
She looked up and blinked, disoriented. Lisa was eyeballing her over the neck of her bass. Thea was surprised to find herself seated behind the drums in the
practise shed, sticks in hand.
"Are you planning on putting those to the skins at some point tonight?" Lisa nodded towards the drumsticks.
"Sorry, sure…sorry…" Thea smacked her sticks together and launched into Brickfield Nights. Marcus and Lisa frowned at her.
"Beastie," Marcus said slowly. "We've done that one. We're on to Carnival now. What's up with you?"
"Are we?" she sighed.
"Are you stoned?"
"Nope, that would be you," Thea grinned.
"Yet I'm aware where we are, geographically and in terms of set list," Marcus said drily.
"I am, too," she said, convincing no one. The fact that she had somehow made her way to band practice and halfway through their set was a little unnerving.
Thea had no recollection of even leaving Mycroft's this morning, let alone setting off from school to Marcus' house. Yet here she was.
Lisa put down the bass and went to put the kettle on.
"Break," she announced.
"Why?" Thea asked.
"Because you're going to explain what's going on and then you'll be able to focus."
"I'm focussed," Thea groaned.
"You are," Lisa agreed. "We'd just like to know on what, because it sure as hell isn't this."
Marcus took off his guitar and plopped on the broken down sofa.
"What up, beastie?"
Thea sighed some more and went to join him.
"I've got stuff on my mind," she offered vaguely.
"No shit."
"Hardy bloody har," Thea punched him on the leg. "It's horrendously complicated."
"We may not be geniuses," Lisa growled, pouring water and ladling sugar, "but we're not completely thick. Try us."
What did one say? Thea wondered. Where did one begin?
"I haven't been home since Wednesday," she said.
"Okay."
"I don't know if I'm going back." Neither Marcus nor Lisa said anything. "I'm trying to work out if I should, I guess. Or rather if I want to…and whether it matters
if I do."
For a while they sat, blowing into their cups.
"Fair enough that you're distracted then," Marcus said finally.
"I'm re-examining," Thea went on. "I've gotten some new information, see, so I've been reviewing all kinds of key memories to see if the new information has
any bearing on them. It's quite inconclusive."
"That sounds a bit intense," Lisa remarked.
"Can I ask you a question?" Thea eyed Lisa carefully. "It might be insensitive."
"You? Insensitive?" Lisa rolled her eyes. "Fire away."
"Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if your sister hadn't died?"
"Jesus, beastie…" Marcus eyebrows almost disappeared into his hair.
"I do," Lisa said quietly. "Not often though. I try not to."
"Why?"
"Because it's pointless," said Lisa. "And it's unhealthy."
"Why?"
Lisa sighed and put her tea down, interlacing her hands and untangling them again.
"Because she has died," she said finally. "We had a ton of family therapy, Thea, and every session they harped on about survivors' guilt and wishful thinking
and all that crap. It's fine to grieve and miss people," her voice took on a recitative quality, "but you have to accept that dead is dead. Living with someone's
memory is fine, but you can't bring them back, so there's no point in imagining what life would be with them now."
"This got really heavy real quick," Marcus said.
"Shut up," Lisa snapped. "Is this about your mum?"
"In a way," Thea admitted.
"Look," Lisa turned and her eyes found Thea's. "I'm not going to even pretend to understand what it's like for you, without your mum around, I can only
imagine it's really, really hard. But," she said quickly when Thea opened her mouth, "it is what it is. You can't change it. No matter how much you want to, you
simply can't."
"I don't think I want to change it, as such." Thea rubbed her hands over her face. "I…it's just so…I used to think I…"
"Deep breath," Lisa muttered.
"Right," Thea laughed a croaky little laugh. "The problem, I think, is that I don't know if I've misunderstood my entire life so far."
"Man," Marcus piped up, "that's beyond heavy now. We're entering the realm of metaphysics here, yea?"
"Are we?" Thea asked. "Maybe. Sorta. But I just don't know. I need more data. On everything."
There was another silence.
"Data on everything," Marcus said pensively. "That's a lot of data."
Lisa snorted.
"Good thing you're a research wiz," she said, giving Thea a slightly over-the-top thumbs up.
"I don't even know where to start right now," Thea groaned.
"If it's about your family," Lisa said, "it's probably best to ask your family. Thicko."
It was so perfectly obvious that Thea was about to give Lisa the finger, in fact her hand was half raised in rude salutations when it occurred to her that she
had in fact neglected to do the perfectly obvious.
"Huh," she said. "I may actually be an imbecile."
"You're special, that's all," Marcus said sweetly. "Now can we please bring the house down with something loud and angry? Might do us all a world of good,
yea?"
It seemed as good a plan as any.
()
Light was spilling from under the closed door of Mycroft's study when Thea returned to his house close to midnight.
"Come in," he called before she had even knocked.
Her uncle looked up from his laptop when she entered.
"How can I help you?" he asked.
"Are Gran and Grumps up at the house?" Thea asked.
Her grandparents' retired lifestyle was positively nomadic and it was beyond Thea to keep up with their locations. 'Up at the house' was shorthand for their
place up in Cumbria, where they spent most of their increasingly rare visits to home soil.
"I believe so."
"I thought I might go see them."
"Voluntarily."
"Yes," Thea rolled her eyes. "Could I get a ride up tomorrow? It's bank holiday long weekend. I'd come back Monday night."
"I see."
Thea found herself getting rather annoyed, unsure why.
"Unless you were planning on taking me to the zoo this weekend?" she said darkly.
Mycroft's mouth twitched.
"The zoo's not going anywhere, I suppose," he purred. "A car will be out the front at seven, unless that's too early?"
"Seven is perfect."
"They'll be expecting you."