So long people! XD Don't worry, this is getting fast now, I have another chapter almost finished, but for now I though you could get to know our main character better. I have to flee now, but see you soon. Hugs. And don't forget to review!
PS: I'm also reviewing myself for typos, remember I don't use english much, be gentle with me, I'm trying :_(
PS2: I'm uploading pictures of 221C and Elia's dresses and stuff for popular request. Check my profile for it.
Days passed since the Adler incident, and my life was back to normal, or as normal as it could be. They saved my life. The three of them took turns to force the air I couldn't breathe by myself into my lungs. They also covered me with blankets so I wouldn't get cold (and for modesty's sake too…) and closed my eyes so they wouldn't dry up. I don't need to say that the very moment I started to breathe alone Mr. Holmes attacked me with questions, but Dr. Watson ordered him to leave me be for a few days. The experience left me mentally exhausted and physically jammed. The doctor advised me to drink lemon juice with honey for the throat ache and some stretching for the sore muscles. That's what I did for days, and to my utter surprise I never heard from the man upstairs, he must be busy gutting some poor animal for researching purposes.
Two days ago Mrs. Hudson received a letter from her family. A relative of hers was sick and the doctors didn't know if he'd survive, so they requested her presence in the countryside. She was reluctant to leave Baker Street and her duties since her presence there wouldn't change anything, but I told her I would take care of 221. She left early in the morning, so I raised sooner to dust the place and mop the floors. Then I took out Gladstone and Bobo after leaving some tea and pastries in Mr. Holmes' door, and now I was cooking lunch. Pork sausages with a side salad of mashed spicy potatoes, chopped green onions and minced crab. I love eating, and so I love cooking. I put his dish, glass and jar in a new tray and went to his door. I was wearing my hair up in a bun, a light dotted dress and walking barefoot. It was a warm summer day and I wasn't willing to be a proper suffering lady. I balanced the tray in one hand and knocked with the other one.
- Come in! – I heard his muffled voice-.
- Good afternoon, Mr. Holmes. Where should I put your lunch? – I asked looking around looking for a tidy spot for the tray.
For a few moments he just stayed there looking at me like he saw a ghost. Pipe in his mouth.
- Mr. Holmes? – I insisted impatiently.
- Right! Over there is fine… - he motioned towards a coffee table.
He came out from his stupor blinking and taking a few little puffs of his tobacco. I tiptoed over clothes and… just things all over the floor. Now, I could lecture him, but it wasn't my place to do such a thing. This was his apartment after all. He could have it however he liked it, and it would just be rude on my part to step onto his things. Plus, he was adamant that nobody touched his stuff, and that I could understand and respect. I had a very strong sense of private property. Also I tended towards the organized messes too. Although mine weren't this messy. There is something about neat places that sets me off. It comes across as fake. When you actually live-in there must be always something out of place, right? Or maybe I was just making excuses for myself. I had made my way to the spot where he wanted his lunch and was about to leave it there when he made me stop dead in my tracks.
- Wait! Here is better- he gestured right beside him.
I exhaled trying to control the urge to slap him and made my way over to him. I tiptoed again. Two little steps to the right, a long one to the front, around a chair and another one to the front over some bubbly experiment he had on the floor. His eyes were still on me, lips on his pipe, and he looked like he was thinking very hard, but then again, he always looked like he was thinking very hard.
- Where's Mrs. Hudson? – He asked me.
- She's visiting her relatives for a while, she told you yesterday – I reminded him bored. For a highly intelligent man it was uncanny the number of times you had to remind him of this little day to day things.
- She did? – He was looking right through me, like trying to envision Mrs. Hudson delivering the message while biting his pipe.
- Yes, Mr. Homes, she d-
- What's this? –he interrupted going for the jar on the tray.
It happened so fast… One moment I was thinking I couldn't wait to get out of his presence and the next everything revolved around the crystal glass hurtling towards the floor. The back of his hand had pushed the glass in his way towards the jar making it fly. You know when something drops from your hands and time seems to stop for a moment? That's what happened here. He interrupting me, his hand reaching for the jar, the glass dropping and my left hand balancing the tray while the right one shot out to catch the glass midair… It all happened in the span of a single second.
I put the glass back on its place and handed the tray to Mr. Holmes with more force than necessary making its content dance dangerously onto it.
- Leave the tray outside when you're finished, Mr. Holmes.
I walked out of there, not giving a damn about what I could step onto this time, and banging the door.
BAM!
I was wiring a little oak in my backyard. It was a nice sunny day. Not warm enough to make activities outside a sweaty nightmare. I could hear Gladstone and Bobo roughhousing inside through the back opened door. I always left it that way to give them and myself more autonomy. They could go outside whenever they wanted, no need to ask. The front door was opened many times a day too. I told Mrs. Hudson she could come in at will many many times. As many times as she had still knocked politely before sticking her nose. But the man upstairs didn't care about polite. The sudden silence surrounding the previous barking and screeching didn't draw my attention at first.
BAM!
Gladstone barreled into the backyard like wildfire with Bobo on his back. I followed the mad race with my eyes, turning my head from the swinging door to the farthest wall where the dog was scratching and whining for a way out. I returned my head to the door, seeing no other than Sherlock Holmes approaching the still swinging door. He stopped it from hitting the frame again with a hand and stayed under the threshold.
- I think he doesn't like me.
- He is terrified of you.
- The door was open - he gestured inside.
- Yes, it was.
My cutting answers were making him somewhat uncomfortable. I mean, as uncomfortable as he was able to feel considering how very inappropriate he was at every time. But if you really observed he had mannerism like any other person. And when he had doubts about how he should act next he would always flee forward, but not without playing with his pipe in front of his lips first.
- Bonsais, right? – He asked walking down the two steps and looking around- An unusual pastime…
- You would know…
- You have no idea.
He was smirking down at me. His body a few inches away from where I was still sitting and facing the oak in a pot. But the lopsided curve of his lips wasn't the center of my attention. No, that could be faked. He knew how to fake an emotion when he needed it, I had seen it happen. So my focus was on his eyes and the mirth inside them. Oh, he thought himself so clever and interesting… Which he was, of course, but it was funny nonetheless. It was always funny how they thought of themselves as withholders of so many secrets. Secrets the agent in front of them usually knew all about. Starting with their pant size and following suit by their bank account number. She had always wanted to smile back at them in that moment. A smile that would plant the seed of self-doubt in their petulant faces. But she couldn't allow herself that personal weakness, so she would just stare back with a practiced and unsuspected face. Of course Sherlock Holmes was a mission like no other. Back in her days it was easy enough for The Brotherhood to gather intel about anyone. There are always snitches and snoopers for that. But how do you spy on someone who lived two-hundred years before your time? Any documentation work you can do falls short, and when the guy in question is sort of a hero, chances are that some of the stuff you read about him is either made up or exaggerated. That was the main reason why it was so important for her to be there time before the final act.
- I was talking to Watson on the telephone –he started-. He and Mary want to have dinner at the Royale.
In January of that same year Graham Bell's patent for an electromagnetic telephone had been granted, and Sherlock Holmes was one of the very first people to have one. Something about Bell owing him a favor. Mrs. Hudson had told her about it at some point.
- Well then, Mr. Holmes, have fun and give them my regards.
- You can regard them yourself, you're invited.
That I wasn't expecting.
- I don't th-
- I don't care what you think, Miss O'Donoghue. If I show up alone they will blame it on me, accuse me of not delivering the message or worse. You're coming. Eight o'clock. Front door.
DING!
I had been waiting at the front of the shop where I bought all my clothes for a while now. If I didn't make it back to Baker Street soon I wouldn't be ready in time for dinner, so I made the ding ring. The couturier showed up behind a curtain two seconds later.
- I'm terribly sorry Miss! How can I be of help?
- I was hoping you remembered the dresses I bought here. You see, I'm having dinner this evening at the Café Royale, and I could use some advice in how to dress.
- Oh, yes, I remember, those were nice dresses... Let me see… What's the occasion? How many are you? Someone you want to impress?
- Just dinner with friends. We'll be four, two and two, but nobody to impress really.
- I see... The blue one! The one with the ''scissor cut'' – he quoted me funny. That's how I called it, because yeah, I'm no clothes pro, I don't know how to call those things. And in my own defense, it looks like a scissor.
- Thank you – I was ready to leave when he stopped me in my tracks.
- Wait! –He went back inside and returned with a rectangular leather box-. Here, for the evening, compliments of the house.
When he opened it I was dumbstruk. Inside was a peacock like hair comb. The body of the peacock was enameled in green and blue, with a pearly shine. The wings and tail were golden, and each feather was full of brilliants, with sapphires as centerpieces of that beautiful eyes that adorned the animal's plumage.
- Good Lord! I can't accept it, it's too much!
- Nothing compared to what you have spent previously.
Yeah, when I told him money wasn't an issue he went full game on me. She would have been fine with two simple dresses, because she wasn't one to spend too much on clothes, shoes or jewelry in the first place, but Mrs. Hudson and Mary were there to remind her that she could need the fancy side at some point, so yeah, she had spent a small fortune in one hit.
- Still, I can't take it just for free-
- One picture –he cut her.
- Excuse me?
- Use it tonight, with the dress. Have a wonderful evening and take one picture for our customer's wall. That will be your payment.
He had gestured to a wall on her left side. She had seen it before, but she never paid it mind. It was full of framed pictures of fancy ladies dressed in fancy clothes. 19th century advertisement, I supposed. Wealthy women would come in, see the miracles he had worked on others and pay for the same.
- One picture – I conceded seeing the resolution in his face. I had no time for more arguing.
I was looking at the back of my head angling a make-up mirror for the tenth time, and touching gently the ''compliment of the house'' nested there to check that it wouldn't fall off for the twentieth time. She was ready. She had been ready and stalling for a while now. Not for any particular reason. By now she was used to Holmes, seeing John and Mary again would be nice, and she had been in many fancy places before. Her initiation as an assassin hadn't been the usual. As a rule, her kind were street dogs and orphans raised under the wing of The Brotherhood. But she had family, a dysfunctional family, but family nonetheless. She was raised in her own home, and her parents had worked to provide her with an education. So she went to uni and completed her law degree. While doing so she developed an interest in international law and a professor took her under his wing. She got admitted into a very private very exclusive law school, where she got a professional master, and that's how she got in contact with The Brotherhood, by the hand of professors, ambassadors and ministers. She did all that by the age of twenty. She did it although she didn't want to. She did it because she was smart, and blessed, and she couldn't let those talents go to waste. That's what her parents always told her. So she did it. But the truth is she was rather depressed. Their dreams were drowning her, because they weren't her dreams. If someone would have asked her by then what she wanted her answer would have been a pregnant silence. That's how deep she was in what she had to do. Her parents had lived their own ambitions through her. But she didn't resent them. You can't resent the dead, it's not healthy. They died. Someone killed them. And Jerome shattered her window and took her hand. And she run with him, she tasted the wind and the cold of the night on her face while the adrenaline affected her body helping her run faster than ever, and jump higher than ever, and she knew that's what she wanted, night after night. They were dead. Nothing held her back anymore. The leash was broken and she was going to run off the steam.
Neighing horses outside brought me out my stupor. I saw it was two minutes to eight, so I took my handbag and run to the front door. I got outside swiftly and was maneuvering with the tail of my dress when I heard him.
- Right on time Miss O'Donog-hue.
I peeled my eyes off the dress and my feet to look at him. It sounded like he had choked on my name. He was there, down the front stairs waiting next to a carriage.
- You alright Mister Holmes?
- Great! Just great! Shall we?
He opened the door of the carriage for me and offered me a gloved hand to climb up that I took in my own gloved one. We weren't there yet and he was acting weird already...
