Mrs. Hudson was arranging biscuits on a plate to go with the tea she had just brewed when footsteps heading down the stairs told her that her guest would be knocking on the door in a moment. It seemed odd, though. Mary must have spent an hour in traffic, and all for ten minutes with Sherlock. A phone call would have done the same with a lot less trouble. No matter. It would give her that much more time to catch up on baby news.
But the knock never came. The footsteps didn't turn toward her door, they headed for the front door. A moment later, it opened and closed.
Now, that really was odd. She waited, thinking perhaps Mary had gone next door for something and would be coming back. There wasn't a sound coming from upstairs, but she knew Sherlock was still up there. She was certain only one person had come down, and she knew all variations of the sound of Sherlock's progress up and down those stairs. It had not been him. So, not only had Mary come and gone in the space of ten minutes, she had apparently changed her mind about stopping back to see her.
Five more minutes of complete silence got the better of her curiosity. She picked up the tea she had intended to share with Mary and headed up the stairs.
Both doors were open. Sherlock was standing at the window, looking down at the street.
"Hoo hoo." He didn't turn, and she added a few raps on the door jamb.
"Sherlock, I brought you some tea."
He acknowledged her with a vague hum as he turned away from the window and picked up the desk chair that had been moved over in front of the fireplace. He took it back to his desk, then sat down and began clicking keys at his usual breakneck speed.
She set the teapot on the kitchen table. It was already too cool to drink, but it had only been a ruse to come up and see what was going on. Sherlock probably knew that. She came out to the living room pretending to do a quick tidy up, stacking magazines while she tried to get a feel for his mood. "Sherlock, did Mary leave?"
He huffed at that and kept typing. "Do you see her?"
She walked into his line of sight, bending down a bit to try to catch his eye. "Did something happen? She was going to stop by and see me but-"
He cut her off with an exaggerated sigh. "Mrs. Hudson, I don't have time for this. Please leave."
"Sherlock." She put her best 'how could you' hurt tone into it, and he sighed again, but he stopped typing and looked at her. She tried again. "What happened?"
"Nothing happened. You will have to ask Mary, if you want to know why she chose to by-pass your refreshments. Now, if I may...?" He tilted his head at the laptop and raised both eyebrows.
He did seem perfectly normal. There was no sign of trouble, though she honestly had no idea what she would expect that to look like. "Fine. I will leave you to it, then."
He had already returned to the laptop. She had been dismissed. For a moment, she considered pressing him, but decided it was pointless. There was something wrong, that much she knew, but he wasn't going to tell her. He never did.
She was nearly at the top of the stairs when he called after her, "Thank you for the tea," in such an oddly gentle voice that she nearly came back, but settled for, "You're welcome, Sherlock."
The lightning quick keystrokes resumed, and she headed down the stairs, wondering briefly if she should call John. Sherlock would have her head for it, and she really didn't know what she would say to John anyway. It was just a feeling.
She wondered if John and Sherlock had some kind of falling out. Maybe Mary had come to try smoothing things over. If so, it couldn't have gone very well. Before the wedding, John and Mary had been here nearly every day. Since then, there had been nothing until Mary's visit today.
She wondered whose decision that had been. There had been talk at the wedding. Idle speculation, out of earshot of the subjects under discussion, wondering how John could have persuaded his ex to be best man, not to mention convincing his bride to overlook it. She had put a stop to it the moment the gossip came to her attention, shaming them into silence. No one who knew Sherlock would ever think that he'd needed persuasion. He would do anything for John.
As soon as Mrs. Hudson's door closed downstairs, Sherlock got up from the desk to close the living room and kitchen doors. He paused long enough to poor a cup of her tea. He sipped it, made a face, and dumped the contents of the cup and the pot into the sink. Then he turned on the kettle and replayed Mary's visit while he waited for it to boil.
He had made a mental recording of the entire conversation, and he'd been reviewing it since Mary left. He studied her facial expressions, watched her eyes. Listened to her words as well as the nuances in her voice that would either corroborate or contradict them. His conclusions remained the same as when he'd heard it all in real time. Her observations may have been incomplete, or colored by her feelings for John, but she believed what she was saying, and her intent was to tell him the truth as she knew it. She had also meant what she said about accepting his decision. If he told her that it would be better for him to remain a part of John's life, she would support him. That wasn't what she wanted him to decide, obviously. She expected his decision to be the one she wanted him to make, confident that she had painted a picture that, if he accepted it, left no alternative.
Hobson's Choice. The illusion of having options when there were none. The piercing irony wasn't lost on him. He was in this position because of the equally optionless 'choice' he'd made two years earlier. If he had taken John with him, or not gone at all, or let John know he wasn't dead, things would be very different. Timing played a part as well. He'd come back six months too late. In the grand scheme of things, it was a blink. In the less grand scheme of his own life, it was everything.
Even the smallest snippets of time could do that. His five seconds of self-indulgent sentiment at the wedding, for example. That was all it had taken for Mary to decide that the best thing she could do for her husband's mental health was to banish Sherlock from his life.
To be fair, the five second lapse in control wasn't born in a vacuum. The assault on his defenses had started with Major Sholto, and been reinforced by the cheap shots from Mycroft in a phone call he should never have made. The final volley was when he'd realised what the bride's symptoms added up to. A baby changed everything. Ended everything. So, he had allowed what he was feeling to show. He had wanted John to see it. He had regretted it the instant he saw that he'd succeeded, and he'd been regretting it every day since.
Mary had just provided him with the perfect opportunity to take it all back. John would be relieved, Mary would be grateful, and his own dignity would be restored. And all it had taken to pull it together was timing- the fortunate kind- and a case that had recently dropped into his lap. He would be able to erase a mistake, and in the bargain, he would take down a man who deserved it more than anyone he'd encountered since Moriarty.
Two birds with a single stone. Elegant.
Two nights ago, he had come home to what he'd assumed to be Mycroft's car parked out front. Before he could walk up and jerk the door open to tell Mycroft where to put his umbrella, the door had opened, and Lady Elizabeth Smallwood had stepped out.
Lady Smallwood was an old friend of the Holmes family; part of it, actually, though very distantly and several times removed. She had once stayed at the Holmes estate between divorces when Sherlock had still been in school. She was fond of hunting, as well as being an impressively good shot. She had taken Sherlock with her on several outings, and they had become friends. He had not seen her in years, but she had still felt comfortable enough to reveal the intimate details of the blackmail threat she needed him to resolve.
When she had given him the name of the blackmailer, he had recognized it immediately, though not just for his publishing empire. It was because Sherlock had recently met the man's most trusted employee. And just that quickly, he knew how the case and his issue with Mary Watson fit together as if they'd been created in tandem.
He had spent the next twenty hours doing research online, wandering across the line enough to raise an alarm with Mycroft's ever-watchful minions. He'd gained an entirely new appreciation for the abomination that was Charles Augustus Magnussen, and he knew exactly how he would bring the man down. He had been in the process of mapping it all out in his head when the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs told him his brother was about to appear. He had opened the door before Mycroft reached it, then stood blocking his path.
"Mycroft. Doing a bit of electronic eavesdropping, were we?"
Mycroft was wearing his trademark three piece suit and carrying his umbrella like a walking cane. There was a large envelope tucked under his arm. "As a matter of fact, yes." He had pushed past Sherlock and settled into his brother's fireside chair. It had taken him all of ten seconds to comment on the absence of John's chair. "Have you sent it out to be cleaned?" He had asked with his customary sneer, but there had been something in his eyes that looked uncomfortably close to sympathy.
Sherlock had enlisted a kitchen chair this time, and placed it opposite Mycroft. "I wish I'd left the bloody thing where it was. I didn't realise it had its own fan club."
Mycroft had dropped his chin and given him a knowing look. "I didn't come to discuss your decor, Sherlock. You know why I'm here. What's got you pillaging databases that I have expressly told you to avoid?"
Sherlock had shrugged. "Pick passwords I can't crack in three tries. And you already know the reason for the research." He had known from the start that Lady Smallwood's visit would not go unnoticed. "It's for a case."
"What case?"
He'd snorted at that. "Mycroft, don't pretend you don't know that Lady Smallwood came to see me. You know I'm not going to tell you the specifics, so let's not waste any more of each other's time." He got to his feet. "You know your way out." He took a step toward his desk.
"Sherlock, sit down."
He had rolled his eyes, but he returned to his seat. "I'll stay out of your databases. Happy?" He was finished with it, anyway.
Mycroft had studied him for a moment, the way only Mycroft could do. "Just as you are unable to share the details of your 'case' with me, I am prevented from giving you my reasons for this request, but I am asking you to stay out of Lady Smallwood's...situation. It is very much in your best interest to comply."
Sherlock had sat back, searching Mycroft's face for anything that might explain the sense he'd just gotten that this was much more than it appeared. This wasn't about the database intrusion. "You have some reason for wanting Lady Smallwood's 'situation' to go unresolved. What?" Mycroft had blinked, and Sherlock's eyes narrowed. Direct hit.
Mycroft lifted his chin. "The matter is not open to debate, and I am not going to justify my request. Lady Smallwood has a great many other resources to handle this matter. You are not the only option."
"Then you do know what she came to see me about." Sherlock had stared at him a moment, then shook his head at Mycroft's grim silence. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but what's really bothering you? I realise it's a foreign concept, but you might try telling me the truth."
The superior sneer had returned. "I see that my concern is wasted, as usual." He had risen stiffly to his feet. "Your access to the databases will be closely watched, and I can no longer shield you from the consequences." He had walked around Sherlock's chair and headed for the door, then turned as he reached it. "If you persist in this endeavor, I can promise that you will come to regret it bitterly, and for the rest of your days."
Truly baffled now, Sherlock had followed him, reaching the top of the stairs just as Mycroft stopped on the landing. Their eyes had met and held. Mycroft smiled with no trace of humor, then turned and headed down the final flight. Sherlock had walked back to the windows in time to see his brother's car pull away.
Looking back, Mycroft's dramatic overreaction bothered him less than it had at the time. Sherlock put it down to his brother trying a new approach to managing him that, hopefully, he would now add to the dust bin. 'Regret it bitterly and for the rest of your days' sounded like the grown-up version of Mycroft's threatening him with a boogeyman in the closet when they were children. It hadn't worked then, either.
Mycroft's warning was part of their routine. He would ignore it, just as he'd always done. Just as he knew Mycroft expected him to do.
End of Chapter Two