Sherlock
This isn't my fault.
Everybody says that. Every failing recovery case has somebody to blame. But really. Honestly. This isn't my fault. It's Donovan's. That sounds really unfair, I know; she's had such a rough time of it lately. How perfectly awful of me to lay this fresh sin at her feet. But if you think about it, everything that's happened to her has been beyond her control, up until this point she has nothing to be apologetic or guilty for. And even this is blameless. I beg no apology, I expect no contrition. She didn't mean to do it anyway.
No, that's not true either. Forgive me, I'm having some difficulty effectively arranging my thoughts. She meant what she said, but had no idea, could never have had any, what the end result would be. Knew not what she did, is perhaps the archaic phrase required here.
You see, she said thank you.
As I was leaving, this is. She saw me to the door and said thank you. And when I asked her what for she turned quiet and shy, and said, "Just… thanks."
You understand now, obviously, don't you? I don't even need to worry about this being the logic of the incapacitated, because I wasn't yet incapacitated at the time. This was the logic of a completely straight mind, inches from sickness, made clear and sharp with pain. If anything, it makes less sense to me now. But you're straight-headed, and you must see. Yes? She didn't leave me any choice. She said that and what else was there, in all this wide world, that I was supposed to do? I couldn't crash, couldn't stop what had been so determinedly begun.
It's simple; I have experimented. I revisited the world outside addiction and found it to be the same one that put me here to begin with. The experiment is over. The results were conclusive. There's nothing up there worth fighting for.
By sheer chance, or maybe just proximity, I found Ruby again. She's unconscious, though, for the most part. Every so often she'll bubble up little fragments of speech, but I don't know who she's talking to. Don't' think she knows I'm here. I'm happy to have found her. Mostly, this is because Ruby gets the mattress. Her father is the source behind the dealers behind all the good dosses. Ruby always gets the mattress, and doesn't mind when I borrow a corner.
Well, I did for a while. I was sitting up there with my back to the wall, with her feet in my lap. It was nice; her toenails are neon pink, it was very distracting. But despite all efforts to keep him out, all walls put in his way, everything I've done to just make him go away, Carl Hedegaard crept into my thoughts. What easy pickings we'd be, how we'd be displayed. And then I felt I was jinxing Ruby just by sharing that space and now I'm on the floor at her side.
Donovan's fearful syndrome. The remnants of long-passed Latin lessons are patchy but… Saturnaphobia? No… No, not that… Sisurna. Sisurnaphobia.
You see? I still remember my Latin. I told you I was alright, really.
Or I was, until just now, when downstairs there was suddenly this rush of feet, this noise of big sports bags being moved very quickly, windows opening, warnings shouted. All the chatter and din of mass exodus. Now I'm a bit annoyed. Now I grab Ruby's arm, feeling too much like the bones of it might snap in on themselves, and shake her. "Ruby. Ruby, police, or something, probably."
Her eyes peel open, just a millimetre or so. If you hadn't seen them closed you wouldn't notice. "Wha'?"
"Police. Coppers. Trevors. Old Bill-"
She giggles. "Our friends," she says through it, "with the talking brooches."
What? Talking…? Oh, because of the radios, how they wear their radios… Which just… I know we have better things to think about, but I have to laugh at that. And it's like so many other times, once I've started, it's crippling, and absolute, and won't leave me alone. I can't stop. Before long, I can't move. There are boots on the stairs and I know I have to. This is Ruby's fault. She didn't need me to wake her. Nobody would have cared, they probably would have let her sleep. Now I've done us both in, but it's only because she was right there next to me.
It's not my fault.
Except, apparently, it sort of is. They're coming straight for me. One of them checks me off against a picture and calls his friends (via talking brooch), and it is me personally who is removed from the premises, dragged by the arms, with Ruby keening because she's too high to even know what's going on behind me, not really knowing that much myself, until they pull me out and put me in the back of a car. I look at the passenger seat; the person you're being brought to is never driving.
"Ah. Ave, Lestrade."
"What?" he says. He doesn't get it all either. It's a theme. Wonder if he's tried drugs, as an out? So much more consuming than alcohol. Faster, too. Probably shouldn't ask him right now, though.
"Quid agis hodie?"
"Sherlock, snap out of it, would you?"
"Bene me habeo, gratias ago pro petendo…"
"What is that, Italian?"
"Non, linguam italicum non loquor..."
He won't even turn. He looks at me only in the rear view mirror. Says quietly, sounding angry, almost hurt (what have I ever done to him?); "Your brother's been half-mad looking for you. Another body on the street this morning and he seems to think you could be on the hit-list. Can't say I'd be too annoyed, myself, but he's upset. And this is as close to work as they'll let me get until my evaluation next week, so I said I'd find you."
Donovan must have tipped him off; what direction I left in, on foot, hungover, it narrowed the field for him considerably. It's alright. She probably didn't know what she was doing, really, what hands she was delivering me to, and me too far gone to properly defend myself.
I brace myself. This is going to be no fun at all. Actually, wouldn't mind another jolt, for the road, before going to face the afternoon ahead.
Condemnant quod non intelligunt. I have to find a way to make them understand.
Jim
Holmes should have been in touch by now. We've gone so far past the point where Holmes should have gotten in touch that I've gone through worry, out the other side and now I'm worried again. Think about it; ten minutes for word that Underwood was dead to get back to headquarters, maybe an hour for Mycroft to get in the loop, if that? Ten-to-fifteen minutes' moral debate, and he still should have been in touch hours ago.
What else is there? I must have missed something, yeah? There has to be something I haven't factored in, and I can't even think what it would be, except that it has to exist and I have to have missed it.
I've been thinking about it so long I can't actually think anymore. Just keep looking over at Dani's phone, waiting, like glaring at the thing will make it start bleeping. She, by the way, is unruffled, paying absolutely no attention to anything. She's turning the phone over and over against the arm of the chair. In her other hand, she has a pen, and she's marking pages and circling things in some glossy magazine with no words.
"I'm doing this for you, y'know," I tell her.
"Wearing a track in Seb's living room floor? Darling, you shouldn't have…"
"Holmes. For you and for him. Where is he, by the way?"
She looks up from this pre-shopping, fixes her eyes on me. I slow down, but don't quite stop pacing. That's what she wants. Daring, challenging, "Think about it."
Why should I? She's been here in the whole time (like I'm letting that phone out of my sight). She could just tell me. But no, it has to be a drama, and I can't let her win.
Moran got out of the multi-storey in one piece. Had to do a bit of running at the end, but otherwise it was fairly placid. Out from under his one-eyed telescopic gaze and the glare of his cereal-fuelled jealousy, I finished my eggs in peace, watched as the opposite corner bloomed, first with blue flashing lights and then with the red blink of cameras and the pop of pap-cameras. It was good fun. The two old-world gents at the table to my back started talking, loudly, how if this last month hasn't been the beginning of the end of the world, we'll spin forever. Society is crumbling. The centre cannot hold. Civilization has fled and left London a zoo. Meanwhile, Moran would have been either blending in seamlessly, vanishing, or still running and having to get rid of the rifle. I was told how it all went, but it was hours ago and it's not like I haven't had more on my mind, Christ's sake… And then he came back, and he was in a good mood, and I was just starting to get a bit edgy about this and then…
Oh, God, it's sickening. I don't mean to spit the words out, not at Dani, but, "He went out for milk…" Who needs milk, fuck's sake? What, for his fucking Sugar Puffs? It's not as if the world is turning. It's ending, remember? It's all slowed right down and that's what's holding up Mycroft, obviously; he's running at the same snailish rate as decency and humanity, of course! I mean, when he calls, yeah, by all means, go for milk, I will need some for my tea, but until such times! Until such times, Sebastian Moran, do not presume to continue with the petty little concerns of existence, because nobody'll thank you for it when you're the last one to die, going round the world making sure all the lights are off before you go to do the stars.
"You should probably sit down."
"Somebody has to keep moving, Danielle."
"Sit down or I will make you sit down."
"Excuse the fuck out of me?!" But I'm pacing back past her. Her one heel pins my toe and I spin on the step, stumbling backward into the sofa. Not sure quite how to respond to that. Hurt and offended, yes, angry as hell, yes, but it was quite a nice move, and it's knocked the breath out of me, so maybe I'll just stay where I am for a second first. "…How long have you been wanting to do that?"
"Long enough to have the angles and timings figured."
"I am missing something, Danielle."
"Well, maybe hearing his colleague was shot in cold blood, especially with being aware we were involved, 'advancement' wasn't the first thing his mind lit on."
…Woman talks some crap sometimes, I swear. "And what else?" I shouldn't even ask the question; any answer is ridiculous Of course that was the first thing his mind lit on. He was already thinking about it. He knew we were involved and Underwood and he was already thinking if there was some way he could turn this to his advantage, before the eggs were ever ordered, the gun loaded. "No, come on, enlighten me to the inner workings of the Holmes ego."
"Underwood steals the work out from beneath him, and is killed. Maybe he's in fear of his life-"
"All the more reason he'd be trying to play us right now."
"-Or the lives of… of those associated with him."
Oh. You just have to laugh sometimes. You think you know people. Like, for instance, I would have said Miss Mies here had too romantic a nature in and of herself. I would never have doubted or disputed that, not for a second. But I thought she was a bit smarter than this, capable of tailoring herself a little bit more. Bless her big bleeding heart, she's sat there telling me Mycroft Holmes has friends and loved ones, and more than this, but that he worries about them before himself.
If she had offered this as an explanation when I was wondering why he was passed over for promotion, why Underwood was flying ahead of him in the race, maybe that would have been the time to consider a point like that. And to reconsider everything that was to come, because it's not the ideal situation for me.
Then, if that had happened, I might have called Moran to me, given him a fresh bullet and my eternal blessing, and sent him skipping off with his tongue hanging out.
But these are all hypotheticals, and not a pick of truth to any of it. We're a long way past that point so I ask, one more time, no jokes now please, why has Holmes yet to get in touch with me, please?
