Warning: This chapter contains a description of an anxiety attack.
The radio needed tuning, but it didn't matter - the white noise let her think. Her fingers tapped impatiently on the steering wheel in a fast and nimble rhythm that years of piano playing and typing had allowed for.
The papers were signed, the decision was final.
No more fieldwork. That was to be expected, as it was a standard punishment for disgraced agents. She could return to GCHQ and be the big fish in a small pond. What was hard to deal with was the humiliation; as she was often told, the people who climb the highest have the furthest to fall.
A car horn bought her back to the road, where the lights had now turned green. Quickly realising her mistake, Faylinn accelerated, embarrassed despite the fact no one was really there to see.
The enquiry had concluded in the late evening. It was now as dark as it could get in Central London - street lights gave even the gloomiest of winter nights a luminous orange tinge. The view out of the windscreen left Faylinn wondering how her brothers were able to see so much beauty in the city. Even at a quiet hour such as this, when the tourists had abandoned the landmarks and commuters had abandoned their offices, the pollution was stifling.
Allowing her mind to drift, she drove without concentrating on her route.
She had been through a lot to get herself to Bolivia. It all culminated in being used as an object to be carried on a man's arm; that was not a role she could allow herself to play. She cut the strings and did what needed to be done. Morals came first, no matter what the latest brief had said.
She was accomplished - one of the best cryptographers of her generation- but it seemed the whole of the intelligence world had quickly forgotten that. Now, she was left feeling like a scolded child who had meddled with the controls.
Her heart was racing. A pedestrian stepped out in to the road, giving Faylinn just seconds to react. The woman, a similar age to the youngest Holmes, already seemed unnerved by the darkness that had descended on the back streets of the capital. She looked at Faylinn with her eyes wide, clearly in a state of shock. This was, of course understandable, considering that the number plate of the Audi was now just a few feet away from her knees.
"Oh...Oh God I'm sorry! Sorry!" Faylinn mirrored the stranger's horror. She held her hands up, surrendering to the fact that blame lay with her.
After gathering herself, the woman ran from the centre of the road and found refuge at the curb. She straightened her coat and continued with her walk.
Shaken, the driver gripped the steering wheel hard, her knuckles turning paler and paler. She found herself unable to move on. The pressure being exerted on her palms now seemed too much to bear; she collapsed back in to the seat, running her hand through her hair.
She forgot to blink and for a minute, all she could do was sit. The radio had finally settled on a station and jingles could just about be heard under the crackle and scratches. Her hand fumbled for the off switch, which it eventually found, leaving her with just the noise of the engine to contend with. Her mind was whirring. Even her vision was failing her - the four silver rings on the centre of the steering wheel became eight, then four, then eight again. Both her brain and it's 'transport' as Sherlock would call it, were failing her in some kind of protest against their poor treatment.
Concentrating as hard as her stressed and tired self would allow, she managed to pull over and turn off the ignition. One wheel was on the curb, but it didn't matter - she no longer had to be in charge of a vehicle. At the moment, she felt like she barely had control over her own body.
The more the windows misted up and the more rain that fell on the windscreen, the more agitated Faylinn became. She felt trapped. Trapped by the car. Trapped by London. Trapped by the men wearing suits and frowns that told her she couldn't do her job properly.
Flinging open the door, she stepped out in to the typical English weather. It didn't take long to determine that she was a few streets away from her brother's flat. She hadn't heard from him since he mysteriously asked for help getting in to Iran. A complicated system of pacts and favours prevented her from asking why - something about a woman? It wasn't ideal, but it was better than crying in a wet and dingy side street.
John Watson did not know that the man he shared a flat with had a sister. But there she was - standing on the doorstep, looking appalling. Obviously, he could never say such a thing. Not only was it rude, but he would then have to live in fear of Sherlock poisoning him (again). The violin music continued to waft down the stairs as the pair stood either side of the threshold, looking at each other.
"So... do you think I could come in?" The man in the jumper, who she assumed to be John, had now been staring at her for a solid minute. "I just need to use your bathroom..." She was now tired of waiting and stepped past the doctor.
"Yes, yes sorry. Er... Just upstairs. On the left."
Faylinn needed no more invitation and was climbing the stairs before John had even managed to finish his directions.
Without another word, she jogged along the corridor, slamming the door behind her before turning to look past her dripping wet fringe and in to the mirror. At least the bathroom was quiet. Outside, London was still littered with noise that seemed inescapable.
Down the hall, she could hear two muffled voices, presumably John was confronting Sherlock about the fact he had a relative that he previously failed to mention.
She had only set foot in 221b Baker Street on one other occasion, but it somehow felt safe. Perhaps it was some kind of sentiment or her mind connecting Sherlock with security. She anchored herself to the floor by gripping the edge of the sink. Feeling less exposed, she took a moment to try to lower her pulse rate.
When her attempts were unsuccessful, she started to panic. Thoughts of the enquiry and Mycroft's inevitable disappointment were like joke birthday candles - every time she blew the flame away, it popped up again, stronger than before.
Salty pearls escaped from underneath her eyelids and rolled down her already wet cheeks. This was not how it worked - emotions were not meant to dominate. Head over heart, not the other way around. Only now, neither were dong a particularly good job. All that her internal voice could tell her was to panic - that she had lost control. Everything else was just a mess of words and feelings she couldn't quite understand.
Standing up no longer felt like a viable option. She allowed herself to sink to the floor, with her back against the tiled wall. It had been a long time since the room had spun at such an acute angle.
John peered over his newspaper for the third time. He stared over at his flatmate, who was sitting at the desk, expecting some kind of movement. It had been almost twenty minutes now - how long could a relative stranger be left alone in the bathroom for? This was pushing it now.
He closed the paper, disregarding it at his feet. He coughed, earning not even a flinch from his flatmate.
"Sherlock?" He stood up. "Sherlock!"
"Hmmm" His response was almost groggy, as if he had been roused from a deep sleep. John spoke through gritted teeth- slightly angry, but the house guest prevented him from raising his voice.
"What are you going to do about..." Quite unsure about how to refer to the newly exposed sibling, he simply flicked his eyes towards the door. Unfortunately, this was rather lost on the detective. Ironic, really.
Sherlock squinted his eyes. "I'm sorry, what?"
"You know!" He made the same gesture again, making a point of overemphasising it this time; he couldn't help but feel like he was in a bloody pantomime. Or possibly playing the world's worst game of charades. Knowing that the other man simply wasn't getting it, he decided to spell it out instead. "Your sister is the room next door and has been for the last twenty minutes. I'm waiting for you to do something."
"Oh. Ooooh." He paused, looking past John in to the corner of the room. "Don't worry about her, I'm sure everything's fine." He returned to his reading.
"No. No, that's incorrect Sherlock. At least go and knock on the door, check she's not drowned or something."
"If you're so concerned why don't you go?" This time, Sherlock refused to even lift his gaze from the words on the page.
"BECAUSE SHE'S YOUR BLOODY SISTER." So much for not arousing suspicion.
The volume of John's voice came as a surprise to both of them - they were suspended, staring each other down. After a few seconds, Sherlock eventually relented and propelled his legs up in to the air before striding across the room and heading down the corridor. He threw a questioning look in John's direction before he made his exit.
There was a knock at the door.
"Faylinn?" He took the lack of answer as an invitation and opened the door very slightly. "John said I needed to come and check on you because you've been in here for a wh-"
He finally stopped as he saw the guest sprawled out in the corner. Panicked eyes gave him a look he knew too well (to tell him to shut up). All of a sudden, the awkward posture he had adopted softened and he fell in to place. The fact that at least one person in the room knew what to do meant the wave of nausea creeping over Faylinn retreated slightly.
He knelt down slowly, as if trying not to startle a wild animal. The inner workings of the human brain - all the chemicals rushing around, the electric signals relaying from one place to another - was familiar to Sherlock. Lord knows he had dissected enough cerebrums in his time. Solving this intricately emotional matter therefore quickly became a scientific process.
"You need to breathe slowly and deeply. Hyperventilation results in decreased carbon dioxide levels in the blood - it is expired faster than it is produced by the body. This results in the rise of the blood's pH level. This in turn causes blood vessels to constrict, which then slows down oxygen transport into various body parts, including the brain." He returned back to the room. His eyes had glazed over as he reeled off the definition that was for some reason made readily available by his Mind Palace.
There it was again: the please shut up face. Uncomfortable already, he manoeuvred his long legs so that he could sit down. Faylinn, meanwhile, retreated even further in to her own little world by pulling her knees up to her chin, leaving her face almost completely covered. Nevertheless, Sherlock did not fail to notice the trails of tears curling across her cheeks. He allowed silence to fill the room while he weighed up his next move; all this used to come so naturally to him. When did he lose his touch?
"I will sit here for as long as it takes."
He spoke again. "Listen to me. No one in this world will think any less of you because of this. Do you understand?" A small nod was delivered in his direction, still from behind a shield of her hands. It gave him some confidence that at least some of his words were going in. The rise and fall of her chest began to slow; Sherlock was now content that crisis had been averted.
After several long minutes, a small murmur escaped from the woman in the corner. It was so quiet that even Sherlock had to give himself a few seconds to piece it together.
"I don't want to talk about it." She sniffled.
He nodded, despite the fact his sister had no way of seeing this approval.
The stillness of the room could not have been more different from the inside of their heads. Faylinn's mind jumped from one scenario to another - it was busy, but not particularly panic stricken - Sherlock had that effect without exerting any effort at all. The elder was desperately rummaging around the cluttered desks and drawers and desktops that constituted his Mind Palace, scrounging for a useful or meaningful memory. His escalating desperation and disappointment in himself was bought to a halt when he felt her head on his shoulder.
He didn't have the heart to move her - he didn't want to. Wordlessly, they sat on the tiled floor, listening to the rain hit the window in a satisfyingly consistent pattern.
Once again, Sherlock was the first to speak.
"Should I put the kettle on?"
Thank you to everyone who has followed/favourited so far - I would love to know what you think! The next chapter will be up this time next week.
