Remember the John and Rosie chapter? The one when I almost cried because Mary? Well, this one is directly mary. Yay, more tears for us..?
The kitchen was on fire and it was, thankfully, not Rosie's fault.
That was unusual. Most people would peg that kind of accident as the cause of an eccentric, hyper, unnaturally bright and slightly ADD ten-year-old. Heck, even the Watson-Holmes household was normally wrecked because of Rosie. But not today. Today it was all Sherlock's fault.
Rosie wasn't even in the same room as Sherlock when the fire started. She was on John's laptop, intensively researching spelling words for a test. In fact, she'd just figured out that "kumquat" was a sort of orange-like thing from a "group of small fruit-bearing trees in the flowering plant family Rutaceae" when a strong, acrid smell of smoke started streaming from the kitchen.
"Huh?" she said, raising her head.
Sherlock came rushing out of the kitchen, coughing. "The room is partially on fire."
"What happened, Sherlock?" Rosie asked.
He cocked his head. "I don't think your dad would like me to tell you the full details, but the general gist is that leaving a specific amount of specific objects in the microwave for a long time is a fire hazard."
"I thought so."
They stared at eachother, then Rosie started giggling. Sherlock cracked a smile. They could have gone right back to their regular business, ignoring the flames in the kitchen, had John not smelled smoke from Mrs. Hudson's apartment and dashed upstairs.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" He shouted, barging into the flat.
Rosie blinked. "Sherlock set the kitchen on fire."
"It was an accident!"
"Jesus CHRIST!" John yelped.
He grabbed Rosie and covered her mouth with his jacket, shoving her towards Sherlock.
"Keep the cloth over her mouth and stay away from the fire!" John commanded.
Sherlock, stunned, obeyed.
John edged into the kitchen and hurriedly filled two pots with sink water, promptly pouring their contents into the rising flames of the microwave.
"You sure are lucky that was a small fire," Rosie told Sherlock as the heat died down. "Because if Dad died now I'd hunt you down and murder you."
Sherlock nodded thoughtfully, watching John spill a final cup of water onto the now-blackened and burned microwave.
"You wouldn't have to." He said. "I'd kill myself first."
After John put out the fire, he screamed at Sherlock for a solid ten minutes. Most of it was rubbish about Endangering Rosie and Destroying Mrs. Hudson's Rented Flats. Some of it was abuse and swear words (during which he angrily covered Rosie's ears). Lots of it was just repeated phrases like: "Jesus, Sherlock" and "Unbelievable!" and "For Christ's sake, can you NOT cause havoc for once?!"
It was only when he finished yelling that John realized Sherlock had quite a serious burn on his forearm. It was a bit hectic.
"Oh my god! Why didn't you tell me?"
"It's just a burn, John."
"A BURN IS PRETTY SERIOUS, SHERLOCK."
"What could you do about it, anyway? What would be the point of telling you?"
"For Christ's sake, I'm a bloody doctor!"
John insisted on driving Sherlock over to the emergency room, after inspecting it and giving his medical opinion that it was at least Second Degree. Rosie was not permitted to come with them (hospitals, apparently, were not a place for young girls). Therefore she was left alone in the flat with Mrs. Hudson just outside and a firm order to not go near the burnt microwave.
The first thing Rosie did as soon as her dad and uncle left was ignore her father's command and approach the wrecked appliance. It was weirdly melted and pretty cool, but gave off an atrocious smell of smoke and burnt plastic. Rosie retreated back into the Living Room and started Looking For Clues.
Looking For Clues was a game she'd invented back when she was eight. It basically involved Rosie hunting around the cluttered little flat for any little detail that could direct her to a story from John or Sherlock. She'd been playing this game for years now, and very rarely did she find an object of interest.
Until now.
It was a wide envelope with a knife stabbed through it, pinning it to the messy mantelpiece. Rosie must have passed it hundreds and thousands of times in her life and never given in a second thought; now, however, she found its contents to be a possible clue to her father's old life.
Easing the knife out of the wood was pretty hard. It was stuck fast and deep and Rosie almost sliced her hand off a few times. She did cut herself a bit, but in the end the envelope was freed.
Sucking her bleeding finger, Rosie turned the envelope upside down and gently slid out its contents. All it held was an old DVD disc with two words written on it in black marker: MISS YOU.
Rosie inspected the disc from close and found nothing odd, so she decided to try watching it. Perhaps it held something big and special that could lead her to learning about Moriarty?
The TV DVD player still had an old record of The Jungle Book stuck within it. Rosie chucked it in the CD drawer along with all the other Disney movies and slotted in the Miss You DVD instead, curious. She then settled down on the couch to watch it.
The screen flickered and sprung to life with a video of a woman.
A woman that Rosie knew very well, though only from photographs that John carried around with him always. Only from whispered words behind her back. Only from silent tears in the night when Sherlock hugged John and repeated a sentence that Rosie couldn't make sense of.
Rosamund Watson the First- Mary Elizabeth Morstan.
Rosie recognized Mary a split second before she started speaking; a split second before her own life fell apart.
"PS." Said onscreen Mary, beginning a sentence.
Mary's voice.
Rosie had heard it when she was a baby, a little child no older than a few months. She couldn't recall what her mother sounded like. Even John's memory of Mary had begun to fade, though he'd never forget her.
Mary's voice.
Rosie slid off the couch and kneeled before the TV screen, her head buzzing. Mary was talking but all Rosie could hear was the voice itself: sweet, British, soft, caring. The onscreen Mary was smiling knowingly and staring, it seemed, right at Rosie.
"There is a last court of appeal-" Mary told the camera, and Rosie suddenly realized she was aiming her words at Sherlock and John. She'd made this DVD before her death, but she somehow KNEW she was going to die. She KNEW what would happen.
Rosie felt sick. Her eyes burned with brimming tears of confusion and misery and horror.
Mary kept smiling, not knowing her only child was kneeling before her with a look of despair on her face.
"I know who you are. I know who you could be. A detective who solves crimes to get high, and a doctor who never came back from the war."
Rosie's head spun. She clutched her stomach, wanting to die.
"There will always be two men, sitting in a scruffy flat, arguing-" Mary went on.
Rosie choked back a whimper. Sherlock. John. 221B. Mary. Family. What was happening? What was her life?
"-My Baker Street boys." Mary finished. "Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson."
The video ended; the replay button popped up onscreen. Rosie started at her mother's face, frozen in a final and pixelated smile.
Her Baker Street Boys.
But there was no Rosie.
She could hear Sherlock and John coming upstairs. Their footsteps thudded on the stairway, their voices rising and talking.
Rosie didn't care.
They walked into the flat, both smiling. Sherlock had a bandage wrapped around his forearm.
"Hello, love." John said.
Rosie turned to him, her face still a mask of misery and her eyes welling up with tears. John started, realizing his daughter was in emotional pain.
"Rosie! What happened? Did you watch a sad movie again?"
Rosie stared at him as he stepped forwards to see the TV screen and stopped short, eyes widening with mourning and horror.
A single tear escaped Rosie's eye and slid down her burning cheeks. A small relief in a sea of pain.
"Mum." She whispered.
And in that moment, it seemed to be all over.