Ch. 11 (Super) Mini-List:

Dream Violin - Craig Armstrong

(I seriously apologize for being away from this for so long. I hope to hear from some of you in the reviews! Thank you all for your patience and understanding.)

11.

Several days after my mum's little pre-Christmas bash, she moved out of our flat. I begged her to tell me why, though Sherlock sat contentedly in his armchair reading the paper. Or pretending to. He didn't turn the page for the ten minutes I pleaded with her for an explanation. Refusing to give me one, she smiled and placed a kiss on my forehead and waved off my insistence that I at least help her take her suitcase to the curb. I watched after her, worry knitting my brows together. If my mother had seen, she would have scolded me. Don't give yourself lines, she would have said. But she never looked back.

After she'd left, I huffed and turned on Sherlock.

He raised the paper higher so that I couldn't see his face, never once saying a word. He was glad of her departure. I half expected him to begin rejoicing the minute the door to the flat closed. I'd thought I would feel the same way. But now, in the new light of what I'd overheard during the party, I wasn't quite aching for her to go. I wanted to be there for her, to be understanding. But it seemed that I was not the person she was willing to tell her troubles to.

No, she was gone. And the flat was quiet again. For her visit, I'd shoved John's boxes at the bottom of my closet. I didn't want her to be struck with the realization I had upon moving in – that all I had left of my brother were his things. It still managed to take my breath away when I least expected it. It would have destroyed her. As I sat in my floor looking at them, chin on my knees, I wondered if it was time to take them home.

My father could handle it. He was stronger than me, stronger than my mother and I combined. He would find something to do with them. As it was, I couldn't bring myself to even look at what Sherlock had loaded up inside. I had no idea what I might find there.

I couldn't decide if I wanted to know.

I closed the closet door and stood up. Silently, I made my way to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee. Sherlock was out and I didn't know when he would be back. He'd never said where he was going. I didn't make it a habit to ask.

With a loud sip, I looked around the empty flat. I closed my eyes as if things would be different when I opened them again. They weren't. I leaned against the counter and flipped on the radio, impatient for something to fill the silence. Judy Garland serenaded me with Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

As much as I loved it, I didn't think I'd ever grasped how depressing it truly was. I cut the volume down to a whisper and poured more coffee in my cup. I grabbed a blanket from the sofa and settled into John's chair, watching the beginnings of snow begin to swirl outside the window from across the room. I almost couldn't wait for Christmas day. Idiots drunk off their asses trying to carve ham or string lights from their roof. It would give me something to do for hours, perhaps even a day or two.

After finishing my coffee, I straightened the flat a bit to try and busy myself since my mum was no longer around to fuss. I even ended up categorizing Sherlock's books by genre and then listed them on the shelves alphabetically within that genre. I kept glancing at my mobile, wishing that Sarah Sawyer would call me in even though I was supposed to have the day to myself.

I didn't know how to enjoy my days off anymore. Judy Garland wasn't doing it for me. Neither was cleaning. I wasn't really one to watch films out of boredom because that usually meant that I just fell asleep in the middle of them. Reading was out of the question. I couldn't disconnect enough to pay attention to what I was looking at. I tried calling Dana, but there was no answer. I expected that, but that didn't mean I wasn't more than a little disappointed. I hoped she hadn't actually sunk her claws into Lestrade after the pre-Christmas party. I would have preferred to imagine her sitting at Blandford's or flirting with the barista that worked at the shop down the street. He was the only reason she bought coffee ever. I knew she went more than she let on because each time I appeared to order my usual latte, he asked me about my friend – the tall one, he said. Dana.

I was the petite one. The caffeine-addicted wacko who lived with the loon.

Sighing, I put a little more muscle into scrubbing the bathroom tiles.

I wondered about trekking to see Molly at Bart's, but I refused to get stuck in a morgue if it happened to become too dangerous to travel back home. The thought alone made me queasy. If I had to spend the night in a morgue, I would be plagued with nightmares for weeks. I didn't know how Molly could stand it. I frowned as I realized that I was basically out of options that might salvage my day and resigned myself to continue cleaning.

Halfway through my attempt at killing a little time, a knock came at the door. I sat up and listened for a moment, waiting to see if whoever it might be would leave. The knock came again. I glanced at myself in the mirror, apron and all. My hair was a wispy, damp mess from the sweat that had begun to drip down my neck. My shirt was old and ruined from new flecks of bleach. I prayed that whoever it was wouldn't knock again.

They did.

I stood up with a wince, attempting to regain feeling in my knees before moving to answer the door. Shuffling down the hall, I dropped the sponge I still held in the kitchen sink and discarded my cleaning gloves. The apron stayed. It was either present myself as Sherlock's cleaning lady, or an Oliver Twist vagabond. I preferred the former.

I swept several strands of hair away from my forehead and took a deep breath before opening the door. And I was surprised to find that I did not recognize who stood on the other side of it at all. My brow furrowed before I could rein in the confusion that broke out on my face. The stranger leered, cooing like a mother might at her child. "I imagined you just like this." He crooned in a lilting accent. "Little. Ordinary."

The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up, as it had when I was a child after my bedroom lights had been turned out. As if there were a monster right here, watching just out of my line of sight, waiting to devour me whole. I pushed the feeling down and tried to smile. Tried and failed. He watched in obvious amusement as I struggled to keep my composure. He was savoring my surprise. He was feeding from it, my panic. I attempted to swallow, but my mouth had gone dry. "I'm sorry, who is it that you're looking for?"

"Why, you. Of course."

My stomach clenched. "I'm afraid that I don't know you, sir."

"Not yet." He brushed a cold finger across my cheek before I could slap his hand away. "But you will."

Without saying another word, every instinct in my body screaming for me to run, I tried slamming the door in his face. But his boot was suddenly between the door and the frame, halting any progress I had made without a sound. He clicked his tongue, shaking his head. This was a game to him; he lounged as languidly as one might in their own home. He knew I had nowhere to run, no one to call out to. He was taking his time here with me. As he reached into the jacket pocket of his blue suit, I could hardly stand to watch for fear that I might be staring my death in the face. The relief that flooded through me as he pulled out a thin scrap of paper was instantaneous. I clenched my left hand into a fist behind the door, refusing to start shaking in front of a man who had murder in his eyes.

I looked at it in question, waiting for him to explain.

"This," he purred, "is for your detective. From a friend, tell him." As I took it, willing my hand into stillness, he smiled. My blood ran cold. "Thank you. Katherine." He moved his boot from the door and I fell against it, locking each and every bolt we had into place immediately. I backed away until I fell against the sofa, trembling against my will. After I was sure the stranger had retreated from the door, heard the downstairs entrance to the street open and shut, I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe.

And when I opened them, I looked at the paper clenched in my fist.

Three letters were written on it.

I.O.U.

I dialed Sherlock immediately.

Within five minutes, Sherlock bolted through the door as if the hounds of hell were on his heels. The sound of the door being flung open startled me, but I didn't move from the couch. I was still cowering there when he spotted me. The fury in his eyes turned my legs to jelly. I was so accustomed to seeing him unaffected by everything (save my mother) that the way he tore through the flat, checking every room as he went, made me feel sick. Something really was wrong, then.

When he returned, he sounded breathless but no less determined. "Tell me everything that happened, Katherine. Everything."

"I was cleaning." I said. "It was nothing. I was doing what I always do. And someone knocked so I answered the door, but I…" I shook my head. "Something was off. I felt strange." Sherlock was pacing, energy rolling off of him in electric waves as he listened to me without a word describe to him what could have been a very innocent, if not stalkerish, exchange had the man not known my name. "He knew me, knew my name. He said that –"

Sherlock paused. "Tell me."

"He said he imagined me like this." I gestured to myself slowly, still hardly able to believe what happened. "Little. Ordinary."

The storm in his eyes took pause. I fought to keep the suspicion from my face as I watched him. He recognized something. "Did he have any defining characteristics?" He asked, calmer than before. Too calm. "A tattoo, a birthmark… an accent?"

"An accent. Something. I can't be sure. It was all over so quickly." The shock was wearing off now that Sherlock had returned home. Death felt farther and farther away by the minute and as I watched Sherlock thinking, I realized that he was digging for something. Sherlock expected our visitor to have an accent. I narrowed my eyes, the note still clenched in my hand. "Why have you not called Lestrade?"

"In a moment." He said. "Tell me more."

"There isn't any more." I had to work to keep from shouting at him. Whatever he was working on, he'd known it was treacherous. But it was clear also that as he paced with that unfamiliar storm raging in his eyes that Sherlock had never expected anyone to dare to come so close to home. To me. "Who is he?"

"Someone of great interest to me." He replied. By the tone of his voice, I might have said that he was no longer worried about what had transpired. I would have bristled had he not instead gone to the windows and looked out at the street, one by one. The expression on his face never changed to indicate that he saw anything telling. Quietly, he locked each window and drew the curtains. When he was done, he walked back to where I sat, reached behind me and produced a blanket. Tucking it around my shoulders tightly, he drew out his mobile from his pocket and walked to the kitchen, speaking low enough into the receiver that I couldn't understand what it was that he was saying. I didn't bother straining to hear him.

I settled into the cushions, grasping the blanket tightly. The rustle of the I.O.U. caught my attention. I laid it down on the coffee table with a start, as if it were a viper instead of a piece of paper. When Sherlock exited the kitchen after ten very long minutes of waiting, he double checked the bolts on the door before addressing me again.

"I spoke to Lestrade. He will be here shortly. As will a locksmith. You will be given a new key to this flat and the entrance downstairs. Mrs. Hudson insists that she never let your visitor in the building. Therefore, I believe a little caution is not unwarranted. Lestrade insists on it."

"Alright." I said, voice hoarse.

There was a glimmer of something strange in Sherlock's eye before it vanished and his gaze landed on the paper I'd discarded minutes before. He swiped it up with a dexterity and swiftness that I only saw when he played his violin. The focus in his face was not that of a musician but that of a detective. He was working.

"Sherlock?"

"He left this." Not a question.

"Yes." I said. "From a friend, he said to tell you." I left out the part where Sherlock had been referred to as my detective. I wouldn't admit to that. I watched him with greater intensity than I usually bothered to. There was something mesmerizing about the way he studied the letters. I knew that he was committing everything to memory. The ink, the brand of paper, the penmanship. I wondered if it struck a familiar chord somewhere within him, if he'd seen it before. "Who is he?" I asked again, half-expecting another non-answer.

Sherlock placed the I.O.U on the table before he straightened and looked me in the eye. If he meant to do it for effect, it certainly worked. If he were just trying to scare me further, there was no need. I was already petrified. "Moriarty."

It took me longer than I would have liked to speak again. Even then, my voice was small. It betrayed my weak nerves. "I've never heard the name."

"You never will again." Sherlock replied, but something lingered there at the end.

He was unsure. And that was as close as I had ever seen Sherlock Holmes come to worrying. My throat went a little dry.

I fiddled with the edges of the blanket, rolling it between my thumb and forefinger as I avoided his gaze. "Have you dealt with him before?"

"Once." He said. I couldn't have imagined that his voice was softer than before. "With John."

It clicked then. I never would have another encounter with Moriarty if Sherlock had anything to do with it. That's what he was hoping for. That he could play his cards right and stay ahead of whatever Moriarty had up his sleeve. But I sensed that it was out of Sherlock's control. Most things were. No one could ever predict if death would come knocking at their door. I hadn't. If I had my way, my brother would still be alive. No, Sherlock was simply a pawn in Moriarty's game. And now I was, too. Perhaps I was less than a player. Perhaps I was instead a target – a prize. I clenched my jaw to keep from shuddering. He must have seen the way I tensed, for he pointed at where I had dropped my mobile after dialing him previously. "Call Sarah Sawyer. Tell her you won't be coming in tomorrow."

With a scowl, I threw the blanket from my shoulders and stood from my seat. It was a wasted effort, I was still barely half his height. Intimidation was out of the question, but I did my very best to look furious without resorting to standing on my toes to get in Sherlock's face. "I will not miss work for this. I won't hide. You can forget it."

"Stubbornness will do you no favors, Katherine." Sherlock's words were a near growl. I had to work to keep a glower on my face, the ferocity with which he spoke had caught me completely off guard. "If Moriarty came here, then he will know your habits, where you work – this is no time to find me ridiculous."

"You are."

"Not today."

I stared him down for a moment that seemed to stretch on forever. I began to see that this was not a fight that I was going to win. Sherlock had that look about him – the one like he'd had the night I thought he might hurl Mycroft down the stairs. Wild. Unrelenting.

Lestrade had dropped everything to try and head over to take my statement, a locksmith in tow. Sherlock was wasting no time reinforcing the flat. I had the thought that maybe he realized the danger – maybe he was worried, too. If Moriarty had the nerve to stand on our doorstep to send Sherlock a message, there really was no telling what might follow. If this was indeed the beginning of something. And it certainly felt like it. It was this feeling of foreboding that pushed me to reach for my mobile. I stopped only when Sherlock blinked as if he were surprised I had followed his direction.

"It won't happen again." I said, stabbing a finger in his direction as I tried to drive home my point. "Don't get used to it."

I pretended not to see the smirk that played at the corners of his mouth. And then I excused myself to call Sarah Sawyer.

It took two hours for Lestrade and the locksmith to do their jobs. Forty grueling minutes were spent sitting on the couch, Sherlock pacing, while Lestrade asked me dozens of questions about Moriarty. I had no answers, but with each passing second, I had more questions of my own. It would do no good to ask Sherlock about any of them. He was already determined that I not be any more involved than I was. But even that had been accidental.

I tried to pretend that I was safer as the locksmith handed us each a copy of the new keys. I thanked Lestrade with a weak smile when he'd told me to call if I remembered anything else – saw something new. I didn't bother telling him that if I saw something new, chances were it would already be too late for me. I'd be fodder by then.

It was with this thought in mind that I retired to my room, feigning a headache as I left the D.I. and 'my detective' to discuss whatever the repetition of my story might have uncovered. I lay awake, wrapped in my blankets, staring at the ceiling. Every bone in my body ached from the absence of adrenaline. Was this what John's life had been like here? Or was someone with a particularly wicked sense of humor trying to spice things up for me? I couldn't imagine living like this for as long as my brother had. Then again, he thrived amid war.

I didn't.

As I lay there, thinking myself to death, I heard footsteps in the hallway. Bracing myself, I sat up and reached for my latest read where it lounged dustily on my bedside table. I attempted to look halfway busy when my door opened. I pursed my lips as I looked up from the book I hadn't gotten to read a word of. "Right." He said quietly and shut the door.

Confused, I waited for some sign as to why he left. It came seconds later, in the form of a knock. As I laughed to myself, quietly enough that Sherlock couldn't hear, a weight lifted from my shoulders. One that I hadn't realized was even there to begin with. "Come in." I sighed.

The door opened again, and Sherlock lounged on the threshold of my room. Not sure if he should come in, not wanting to leave. "You're awake."

"Should I not be?"

He tapped the side of his head. "Headache." He reminded me. As if I had forgotten. Wincing, I realized that he had caught me in my fib.

I pretended that Sherlock wasn't seeing straight through me and cleared my throat. "Are you okay? Is something wrong?"

"Lestrade left." Sherlock said simply. "I find that it is now too quiet." He crossed his arms, betraying his hesitation and discomfort at his admittance. Too quiet, for Sherlock Holmes the brooder. I didn't know what to make of it. But I said nothing. I put my book aside and moved a few pillows over to the empty side of the bed. He didn't hesitate to cross the room and plop down in the now empty spot next to me. Despite his complaints that it was too quiet, Sherlock never offered up any topics for conversation. He settled into the bed without so much as a sigh, shoved his arms behind his head, and took up a study of the ceiling.

I laid my book in my lap and looked over at him. "Did you want to talk?"

He looked remarkably at peace as he said, "This is enough."

Despite myself, I smiled. It was faint, almost an afterthought, but it was there. I shook my head and went back to my book, trying to get something out of it should he ask me about the subject matter. Highly unlikely, but I still thought it was a good idea.

Half an hour passed, then two. Sherlock was wide awake, not at all lulled by the sleepy atmosphere of the night or the dim light of my room. Just as I prepared to put my book aside and announce my descent into unconsciousness, he sat up as if he'd been struck by lightning. Or caught dreaming.

I stilled. "Sherlock?"

He didn't look back at me. Only straightened his back and rose from the bed. "Goodnight, Katherine."

The door was shut behind him before I could say a word. The silence didn't last long before the sound of the violin crept in, shattering it. As I listened, I closed my eyes. My heart clenched, caught somewhere between soaring and breaking. As much as I hated to admit it, confusion was the least of what I was feeling. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts before I could torture myself. Drowned out by the music, I murmured a soft goodnight to no one, reached over, and cut out the light.