Author's Note:

Welcome Back! These chapters contain spoilers for S4 (do I really need to say that?). But, yes! I'm back… enthusiastic and not at all affected by the last three episodes(!) I should mention that writing fanfiction is like my own private therapy session, including the psychopathic therapist.

Please read on, and do say hi from time to time!


SERIES 4

Chapter 71 – Miss Me?

Rose took a seat in the tutorial room with her student peers around the cluster of desks toward the front. She sat alongside Indira and Alice, with Andrew and Laura sitting behind them. Heather, another student assigned to their tutorial group, was notoriously late, and her usual chair sat accusingly empty. Brian, their tutor, remained where he was, behind the desk at the front. He was texting on his phone with the excuse that he wouldn't start until Heather arrived.

Alice started quizzing Rose about the London transport system, while Indira had twisted around and was attempting to read the same newspaper article as Andrew and Laura.

"Conspiracy, obviously," Laura declared, leaning back in her seat and crossing her arms in front of her, clearly not impressed.

"I think he was a spy, me-sel'," Andrew added.

"Charles Magnussen..." Brian boomed, startling Rose in the process—although he had pronounced 'Magnussen' as 'Majnussen.' "…was a manipulative, power-hungry monster, if you believe the write-up in Estate5… let's see." He swivelled in his chair, then began rifling through his briefcase. His further commentary was lost on Rose as she immediately turned and fixed her gaze on the paper in front of the others, an uncomfortable churning in her gut.

"Have you finished?" she asked in as casual a tone as she could manage, her fingers poised on the edge of the paper. She waited until Andrew lifted his elbows from the bottom of the page, then drew the newspaper toward herself.

The students and their tutor were all talking over one another, eager to put forward their own theories about—and this had now become apparent to Rose—Charles Augustus Magnussen's death.

Rose's heart drummed in her chest as her eyes quickly scanned the article before she forced herself to slow down and begin from the top of the page. The conversation around her became a distant hum.

How could she have not heard about this? Magnussen had been shot in his own home on Christmas Day! That news would've been everywhere. Rose knew where she was during that period—somewhere between a drunken haze and a snivelling wreck. And forget about discussion on current affairs around her extended family. Their little corner of the world was all they could see and were concerned about—whether or not Harriet's boyfriend had chucked in his trade and spent too much time at the pub; should Henderson open his corner store earlier than 11am on a Sunday; or if they, as a family, should boycott the Asian restaurant three blocks away since Izzy had come away with food poisoning, Saturday last. With Rose intent on hiding away from the world, she had inadvertently become one of them.

By the time uni had started, the news had obviously become stale. Rose submerged herself in the culture of the place, delighting in getting to participate in intelligent conversations; able to get away from her cousins and the ever-present Adrian, the all-round handyman. The handsome handyman. And charming. And totally off limits.

The newspaper article told her that investigations into his death had at last revealed that Magnussen was attempting to buy government intelligence, top-secret information, uncovered in a sting operation that had been planned for months. A junior security services officer had erroneously thought Magnussen was reaching into his jacket for a weapon, which would've endangered the lives of the intelligence officers standing in close proximity, and the 'over-eager squaddie,' one social commentator had remarked, had taken the shot that had proved instantly fatal for the media giant.

Rose exhaled deeply, feeling light-headed. Her vision began to blur and she turned and reached for her handbag on the floor beside her chair.

"…and blackmailed senior government officials," Rose heard, as she delved into her bag for a bottle of water. Brian was reading from his Estate5 article at the same time that Indira and Andrew were debating the ethics of media outlets.

Rose needed air. There was no mention of Sherlock in the newspaper article, and she desperately needed to find further information. She wanted to google the news as it had come to hand since Christmas. To do that, she needed privacy and quiet.

"Just filling this," she said to no one in particular as she made a beeline for the door, clutching her full water bottle.

On Christmas Eve, Sherlock had told her he had something planned regarding Magnussen and his vaults. He'd pleaded with her not to leave and to wait until the new year. Surely this meant he'd been the mastermind behind the sting operation. And now Magnussen was dead. But what about the vaults Sherlock had mentioned? Had government officials meticulously combed through every single document? Would they have found anything relating to her and John Garvie? Or had Sherlock destroyed them like he said he was going to?

Rose locked herself in a toilet cubicle and sank down on the lid of the toilet. On her phone, she searched news items for "Sherlock Holmes" and "Magnussen," but they were never mentioned in any of the same pieces. The earlier articles about Magnussen's fate discussed the possibility of another terrorist attack, and people speculated whether or not this was related to the attack in Paris. This discussion had filtered into Rose's New Year haze, she remembered that, but at the time she obviously hadn't known the stories related to Charles Augustus Magnussen.

And if Sherlock had been involved, then his participation had been kept under wraps. This didn't make Rose feel any better. The scandalous information may still be out there.

But she couldn't do anything about it right now. Rose stood and left the toilet cubicle. Contacting Sherlock Holmes was definitely not an option. It'd been over a month since she had last seen him. Rose reflexively touched a hand to her lower abdomen. She knew she did that every time she wistfully thought of Sherlock. Her belly only felt rounded beneath her flat palm, with nothing visually detectable through her loose clothing. She was almost eight weeks, and had deemed it too early to announce her condition to the world—or at least her family. Not until she was past the first trimester, anyway, she had decided.

As Rose washed her hands in the bathroom basin, Heather swanned in.

"Oo-er," the willowy, raven-haired, full-figured student said to Rose. "I'm glad I'm not the only one who's late."

"We haven't started yet," Rose reassured her.

Heather re-applied bright red lipstick, smacked her lips together, then turned to leave.

"Now you're the last one!" she said gleefully before she exited.

"I've already—" Rose began. Oh, who cared anyway.

Rose quite often led discussions and Brian usually hung onto her every word.

"Now, listen to Rose-Mary," he'd boom, mispronouncing her name every time. He'd check her name off his list by saying, Rose-Mary Sulford; anunciating each syllable as if he were sampling tasty morsels.

She wasn't so concerned about being late for the tutorial just this once. She was obviously the star pupil, but she didn't feel quite so composed yet, and definitely not ready to discuss what was needed for them to conduct their own mock risk assessment. The scenario adapted from a real case had intrigued Rose, but she wasn't in the right frame of mind at the minute.

Apart from the delivery of the single red rose on New Year's Day—her birthday—she hadn't heard from Sherlock either. She half-expected him to pay her a visit at some stage. The thought thrilled her, until she remembered she had decided to carry on her life without him. It was during her sensible times she was sort of glad Sherlock was also getting on with his life. Or was he?

One night, during one of her depressive "what am I going to do now that I'm having a baby?" panic attacks, she had googled Sherlock and was both horrified and curious to find he had created a Twitter account. She spent hours trawling through his tweets, half-thinking it wasn't really him, it couldn't possibly be, until she read some that definitely sounded like his kind of intolerant insult. Followers were either sycophantic fans, would-be clients, or argumentative trolls. He'd give them all the same treatment—succinctly solving their problems with a cursory look at their Twitter profiles, or insulting them for wasting his time. He usually ignored the adoring fans and the smart-arse trolls.

#221BringIt! was the first hashtag she saw, and she almost burst into laughter. Drumming up business, was he?

Rose had a Twitter account, and she had never used it except to follow a couple of health professionals and psychology-related organisations. That evening, she had followed Sherlock Holmes, and hoped she'd remain anonymous in the sea of thousands of followers he had accumulated. She didn't use her real name—not all of it, anyway. Sulnyd. Was that obscure enough? She had no profile photo and had only listed Edinburgh as her location. She checked her feed now and again. It was dizzying, the amount of tweets Sherlock produced in reply to his followers. She gave up trying to follow the threads of conversations on his profile. He was busy. And that was nice.

But Rose wanted to know if Magnussen's unattended vaults were still going to cause a problem for her. Should she reach out to Sherlock?

Rose leant against the bathroom countertop and tapped the edge of her phone against her forehead. False bravado and frivolity surged through her in equal measure. She quickly opened her Twitter app and began typing. She hit the Tweet button before she had time to reconsider.

Oh, God.

She quickly read back what she'd tweeted to Sherlock, then closed the app before leaving the bathroom.

Please help. Someone has damning info about me. DM for details.

How lame. He probably won't even look at it, she thought as she hurried along the corridor toward the tutorial room. Her plea for help wouldn't even stand out among the hundreds he must receive every day, surely. But before she entered the room, she quickly changed her profile to display United Kingdom as her location, instead of Edinburgh.

But why? she thought. Was she really going to remain anonymous, or was she actually going to ask Sherlock specifically about Magnussen's vaults and either give away her identity or pique his interest? But Magnussen could've blackmailed hundreds of people. She could be anyone.

Well, she'd cross that bridge when she came to it: if Sherlock Holmes actually noticed her dull request and felt compelled to respond to it with anything other than a sarcastic quip.

Rose settled into her seat, relieved her group had begun discussing the required reading that had been assigned on Monday, and were making notes on the questions that had to be answered and submitted by Saturday, midnight. Her mind quickly turned to where it was meant to be.

After their session had ended, Rose accepted Indira's invitation to have coffee with her and Alice before their Criminal Justice lecture. They had already met up on a couple of occasions previously, and Rose found their company enjoyable, although they were quite a bit younger than her. They both had grown up in Edinburgh, so Rose was glad to receive insight into the city in exchange for her thoughts on whatever their assigned readings were for the week and her stories about living in London.

As they crossed the concourse in the direction of the on-campus Starbucks, Rose checked her phone. Her heart quickened when she saw she had a notification on her little-used Twitter account.

She stopped dead in her tracks, both Alice and Indira not noticing as they continued walking and talking. She had received a direct message from Sherlock's Twitter account.

Hello, Rose. Magnussen's vaults have been destroyed. –SH x

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Author's Note:

Just a short chapter this time, to get my brain warmed up and my fingers tapping away. I'm so happy to be writing in this universe again! Welcome new readers who have picked up this story during the hiatus, and hello again to existing readers! I have planned out the entire series and am happy to say that I can stick to canon once again, or as much of it as I can interpret :)

Quick quiz: Do you know how Rose constructed her Twitter name, Sulnyd? The clues are in the chapter.