Martha Donovan tried not to stare as Greg and his date - Sandra or Sarah or something like that - dropped into the seats opposite her and Scott, but it was a battle she and her elder son were destined to lose. It wasn't just the faint, repetitive beeping coming from the vicinity of her girl's lower half. That girl, that young woman, even as she ducked her head and tried to hide...there was no mistaking it. She looked exactly like she had been pulled out of a photograph of Martha as a girl. She and Greg were breathless and worried, glancing around the ballroom over their shoulders as though worried they were being followed.
"Greg, my boy, what's going on?" asked August, and the young prince waved him off.
The girl turned to Greg, biting her lip, and oh, God, this couldn't be a coincidence. It was like looking at a ghost. She remembered looking through photographs in the weeks after her Sally disappeared, finding a few of herself as a toddler. They all had marveled over how the pictures of baby Martha and Sally looked like they could be the same child. And now, nearing the 15-year junction of her daughter's disappearance, this girl draped in silver and shedding glitter all over the table showed up looking like something hunted.
She couldn't help the breathless sigh that escaped her lips, the murmured, "You...you look so..." She choked on her words as the girl reached out and covered Martha's hand with hers.
"I know," she replied cryptically, pulling a folded napkin from the prince's jacket pocket and slipping it under Martha's hand. "And there's reason for it. I'll explain it all in time, I swear, but now I've got to-"
"Sally, he's coming this way again; he knows," Greg muttered, pulling them to their feet. Hand-in-hand they fled as Martha's family reeled. Did they really just hear...?
August stood up and half-shouted, "Did he call her Sally?" with a shaking voice.
Simon looked like he was going to be sick. "She looks just like Mum."
Another man, part of the waitstaff, discreetly slipped out the door after Greg and his date, but did not go unseen by the family at table number seven. With trembling fingers Martha opened up the napkin that had been delivered to her by that girl who looked like Sally and read:
"Someday I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, let there be no regrets, no tears, and no anxieties."
I shall see you all very soon.
All my love,
Sally
With tears in her eyes, Martha relayed the note to her husband, who went even paler than before and took off running after the pair without so much as a moment's hesitation. Scott and Simon, and then Martha herself, were hot on his heels, causing quite the stir among the ballgoers. Martha's heart was beating probably a thousand miles a minute with the terrified elation she felt. Her daughter was alive. Her daughter was alive, and being hunted down probably by the same man who had taken her away in the first place. How long had she been trying to escape whatever captivity had kept her away for nearly 15 years? How hard had she been fighting or her freedom?
They followed the sounds of half-shouts and staggering footsteps through the labyrinthine hedgerows, shivering in the cold and rushes of adrenaline as they heard a distinctively feminine scream far off from them.
"No! No, please, don't hurt him!" Sally cried, and then screamed again to accompany the sound of a blunt object hitting pliant flesh.
"I will never let you go."
With a vicious roar of pent-up anger and grief, August shoved his way through the hedgerow just in time to see the man in the waiter's coat leading his daughter to a cab with its light turned out, forcing her to remain standing even though it was an obvious struggle. The prince's friend and bodyguard, John, was crumpled and bleeding from a head-wound in the grass, pinned to the ground with an iron candlestick. With August's silent instruction Simon knelt at the soldier's side to see if he was still alive.
"Stop!" August shouted at the kidnapper. "I'm with Scotland Yard!"
Easy as anything the man turned around, only then baring his gun to aim it threateningly at him. Sally let out a sob that sounded like the word, "Daddy!" Then the man pressed the barrel of his gun to her head.
"Back away, or the girl dies," the man said calmly.
August didn't know what else to do that could help other than stepping back, nearly tripping over John's listless form as he did so. Sally was dragged to the cab and it drove off with a screeching of tires, too fast to catch the plate numbers that probably weren't even registered in the city. Before the sound of the cab's engine had vanished August was pulling out his mobile phone and calling the Yard to track down every cabbie in London, knowing too well that it could take months, even years, to find them all and identify the man, if he even were a cabbie at all.
There was nothing that could be done. Sally was gone, dangled before their eyes like a vision from heaven only to be snatched away yet again. Martha was sobbing while Scott tried to comfort her. Simon, after checking over the soldier, was sitting in the dewy grass with a numb expression on his face, glasses slipping down his nose.
"I can't believe I said all those things to her," was his only explanation for his horrible shock.
Minutes later, after August had called for an ambulance for the young soldier, Greg and a tall young man who August had seen hanging around the Yard from time to time came bursting from the path. Greg was wearing an ill-fitted army jacket, and practically tore it from his shoulders when he saw John pinned to the ground. The tall, hawk-like young man swooped upon the fallen soldier, checking his pulse and trying to wake him up with murmured admonitions and soft kisses pressed to his brow.
"Where's Sally?" asked Greg breathlessly, draping the jacket over John's prone form. When August failed to answer a look of horror spread across his face. "August, where is she? What happened?"
As calmly as he could, August explained what he had seen transpire with the cab and the gun and Sally's cries of terror and pain. When he said which way the cab went, Greg's entire body jerked in that direction, as though he longed for nothing more than to follow its path.
"We have to find her."
"How?" Martha sobbed. "He's had her hidden away for fifteen years. What could possibly make it easier to find her now? It's hopeless!"
But Greg wasn't listening to her. He looked downright inspired as he pulled a slip of paper from his sock and held it aloft. Printed on one side were eight meticulously-written numbers: 4-75-9374-6.
"It's the ID number on the bracelet that bastard's been using to keep her locked up," the young prince explained. "I wrote it down earlier. Think the Yard would be able to trace it?"
August took the paper in numb fingers and nodded. They were getting their girl back.
Some part of Sally had been expecting Papa Jeff to take her home and kill her straight off. Maybe with one of the kitchen knives, quick and messy; or perhaps forcing bleach down her throat, painful and quiet. Some part of her had even hoped for him to, deep down. It was better than the torturous pain that shot through her limbs like electric volts with every move. It was better than knowing Papa Jeff had locked the shed cellar door behind her with no intentions of ever opening it again. It was better then the nauseous hunger that curled through her stomach after a few hours, better than shivering in the dark, better than knowing she had raised her family's hopes only for them to be dashed anew, better than the guilt Greg would likely feel not only for this but for John's injury.
Yes, Sally would have preferred to die than think on that. But instead she was condemned to live, to lie at the bottom of the cellar that had been turned to a storage room years ago, rusty nails digging into her spine and splinters beneath her fingernails. It hurt too much to move, so she would move no more. There was blood caked and drying on the floor beneath her, the remains of her gown were a tattered bloody mess, and she couldn't see from one eye; whether it was swollen shut or she'd been hit so hard that the sight had fled was a mystery.
Waves of heat rolled lazily over her, taking their time in making her shiver convulsively on the floor, and slowly the music from the night before began echoing distantly in her mind. She hummed weakly along with the wavering melody, trying to go back to the night before when things were pleasant and painless and the whole world lay before her. Trying to go back to the warm circle of Greg's arms. It would have been far too easy to love him; perhaps this was for the best after all. Love only confused people, nine times out of ten, and the rest of the time it led to heartache. Why have children if they'll only be taken away, like Sally had been? Why have a lover if they'll only meet a horrible end before their time, like John probably had?
She laughed deliriously at the phrase 'before their time.' If it wasn't their time to die, then wouldn't they not have died at all? What a lovely paradox. Marie always loved paradoxes, thought they were fascinating. She loved to sit against the bedroom wall while Meghan and Alice watched Doctor Who reruns, ear pressed tight to the drywall, twiddling her fingers and smiling as she puzzled it all out in her head. It was Marie who had given Sally the line to put on the note for her parents.
One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, let there be no regrets, no tears, and no anxieties.
Sally regretted ever writing that stupid note.
Her mother had been sobbing as Papa Jeff dragged her away.
Simon looked on the verge of a panic attack with John dying on one side and his sister being kidnapped all over again on the other.
Life, unfortunately, didn't exactly work out as promised, no matter how hard one tried.
There was a loud humming in Sally's ears now, one that she couldn't decipher between herself or the bees that were buzzing around under her skin. She loved bees; they were like tiny puffs of summer air. The hum was so warm, so heavy and soft - it made her want to sink down, down, lower and lower into the recesses of her own head, to just relax and be at ease even as pain continued to spark and whir across her bones. It didn't hurt quite so much anymore, though. The pain was starting to lessen.
A loud bang resonated loud enough to reach her in the windowless cellar; it must have echoed through the whole neighborhood. Then there were voices shouting, faint and muffled through meters of earth and thick wooden doors at the top of the stairs. Another bang, closer this time, followed shortly by another.
"Where is she?" a man's voice roared up above.
Every cell in Sally's body jumped to attention and brought the dulled pain back to a blinding burn. That was August's voice, her daddy's voice, and he sounded very cross. Was it something she'd done? No. No, that wasn't right; it was something they'd done; something Papa Jeff had done. He was trying to kill her daddy. There was more shouting, more confusion. They were trying to find her, but the doors to the cellar were hidden behind the shed and covered with layers of plastic tarps and moldy leaves. She had to do something, make some noise or get to the doors, or they would never find her.
Even with every muscle and joint shrieking in protest, Sally bit back her cries and forced herself up. It felt like it took a decade to get there, but she knew that if she opened her lips and let herself start crying she would lose all fight and leave herself to die at the bottom of the cellar. She crawled blindly to the nearest wall, feeling her way in the dark, and as soon as she felt something substantially heavy used all of her will to knock it over. It crashed with a most satisfying bang on the concrete floor, and either the voices up above stilled or she went deaf.
She felt further along and knocked down something else, a rake or a shovel, and it woodenly clattered to the floor.
"...hear that?" a voice asked up above, much nearer now to the stairs than it had been before.
Sucking in ragged breaths as even that small amount of physical exertion sapped her, Sally stretched her fractured arms as far as she could reach and brushed against another rusty tool. It was jammed against the wall. Pulling the splintered wooden handle with all her might, Sally pulled herself into a half-seated position before it fell away. She collapsed back onto the concrete, gasping as a lance of pain shot through her side. Her vision went white, then red when she tried to move and the rusty rake she'd fallen upon scraped further against her torn open flesh.
Someone was shrieking, shouting for help and sobbing, someone far away, someone under miles of water. The salty flood was coming back like last night with Sebastian, the spray filling her eyes and ears, saturating the bloodied remains of her dress and dragging her down in moments.
Somewhere very far away, a light was shining too brightly. Sally closed her eyes against it and let the water take her away.
Jefferson Hope saw the cars pulling up and knew he had no other choice. "Meg, darling, come sit with me."
His eldest daughter came sedately in and stiffened at the sight of red and blue lights flashing outside. "Dad?" she asked. Jeff shook his head; her eyes filled with tears. "Daddy?"
"I know, my love," he whispered as she curled up in his lap and started to cry. He kissed her hair, soft and fine like her cursed mother's. "Alice is at uni. She'll be safe to carry on without suspicion. It's time."
The door was kicked in as he pulled his father's revolver from the kitchen drawer. August Donovan, two constables, and four armed policemen stormed the little room.
"Where is my daughter?" asked Donovan in his deep voice.
Jeff shook his head. "You'll never see her again," he choked as Meg bit back a sob against his shoulder.
"Tell me where she is!" the DCI shouted.
Pulling the gun from under the table, Jeff pressed one last kiss to Meg's hair before he shot her. Two of the armed officers raised their weapons and all of Jeff's worries were gone.
August wiped a hand across his brow and wordlessly directed his Sergeant and Constable to search the house before calling for two ambulances. Hope was still gasping, but only for another moment before he was gone, murdered daughter falling from limp arms. What a twisted family.
"No sign of her in any of the bedrooms or the cellar, sir," reported Sergeant Wallace, regret in every line of his face. "There are traces of blood in almost every room, but no b-...no sign of her, sir."
He nodded and stepped into the back garden for some air, biting his lip so hard he drew blood. What would Martha say when they still hadn't found her? When it was almost certain that Sally was dead? What would Simon and Scott do? It had taken years for them to learn to pick up their lives again without having a baby sister to blame in all their childish squabbles.
Just for his own peace, August checked the shed, but there was nothing there, not even a spot of blood to go by.
Fifteen years. Fifteen years his girl had been gone. She had been so close - so close - and now nothing.
"Where is she?" he screamed into the frost-bitten air, all dignity thrown into the wind, gone with Sally like a wisp of smoke.
The constabulary filed out, sniffling in the cold but too loyal to leave him on his own. They stomped their feet and shuffled from one side to the other, talking quietly about who would let the ambulances through, but didn't suggest they leave. Every one of them were respectfully quiet.
"Fifteen years," whispered August. "Fifteen years of work, of sweat, of sleepless nights, for this. You raise your children, you teach them about life, but you never want to have to teach them about death. Everything is supposed to be sunshine and happy things. Then...this."
He covered his eyes with one hand and cried.
Sergeant Wallace turned and marched a few steps away, obviously distressed, and froze. "Did you hear that?" he asked faintly.
The others shook their heads, but Wallace paced around the dingy shed with a look of fierce concentration on his thin pointed face. With everyone quieter, it was easier in the chill air to hear the wooden thud of something heavy falling beneath them.
August lifted his head and stepped around to see what Wallace was looking at: a pile of moldy tarps snug against the wall of the shed, too carefully arranged for something so disgusting. They lifted away the tarps just before another crash and a blood-curdling scream tore the air.
"Help! Oh, god, help me!"
Together August and Wallace pried open the old storm cellar doors, ignoring the splinters in their hands when they saw clear, fresh scratch marks in the wood, and then Sally herself - still in her bloodstained and muddy gown - lying curled at the bottom of the steps. They rushed down the steps without telling the rest of the team what they had found, though the men seemed to realize what was going on within moments. Two of them ran to meet the ambulances while August gently pulled Sally's head into his lap and Wallace assessed her injuries.
Within minutes paramedics were picking their way down the rickety stairs with a stretcher and sterile equipment to treat any immediate dangers. Before August could blink twice they had whisked Sally away, leaving him with Sergeant Wallace and blood on his clothes.
"Sir?"
"Mm?"
"Perhaps you should call your wife?"
He was stunned, completely blown away, and nodded before pulling out his mobile yet again. "Martha, darling, Sally's coming home."
It would be a long recovery, that much was certain. Sally woke up in hospital fourteen hours after emergency surgery, dealing not only with the two-inch-deep puncture wounds from the rake but heavy internal bleeding and several broken and fractured bones. The doctors said it was a work of pure magic that Sally had been able to move at all, let alone enough to knock things over and gain the attention necessary to be found. She must have been incredibly strong, they said.
Martha and the boys almost made it to the hospital before Sally did, and had to be wrestled out of her recovery room by a ferociously well-meaning male nurse from Sweden. "This girl, she need rest now," he scolded them. "I know, I know, you are so happy! But no good to wake her before she is ready, ja?"
Two hours after her surgery, Sally started fighting her breathing tube, which was a good sign, but she slept for another twelve hours after that. It might have been her first sleep in a proper bed for fifteen years.
The prince showed up around four, and sat with her family until she woke up with a bunch of wilted flowers clutched in his clammy fist. Then he left the flowers with Martha and vanished into a swarm of paparazzi, pale and upset as he ventured down a few corridors to see his bodyguard, who had thankfully lived after his terrifying injury. That young soldier, too, would have a great deal of recovery time ahead of him, and likely permanent nerve damage in the left shoulder.
Sally was naturally very confused when she at last woke up, groggy and giddy from pain medication as the nurses checked her over. They checked her reaction time, her reflexes, if she remembered what year it was, and tentatively confirmed that she had no brain damage to speak of. So far, out of the woods. Even when she was still having trouble speaking her mouth was forming words, silent cries, the names of her family. They were at last let in only to keep the girl from dive-bombing out of bed to find them herself.
Tears rolled quietly from Simon's eyes as he stared determinedly at the floor, listening to his mother's not-so-delicate sobs. Even though he was gaining a sister back, it felt somehow like a twisted sort of loss. It was like there was a hole being ripped into his insides; a gaping canyon filled with love so strong it hurt. He still remembered Sally's...well, her funeral. How he'd been ten years old and far too old to cry as much as he had. Then twelve-year-old Scott had leaned over, squeezed his hand, and started their fifteen-year-long inside joke.
"Worse than Sally in a strop," Scott muttered across two feet of hospital tile floor, and Simon choked on simultaneous laughter and crying. He took the tremulous two steps to his sister's bedside and grasped her hand, watching her smile up at him through medicated tears.
"Missed you, Sal."
Under cuts and bruises she whispered back, "You too."
"I'm s-sorry I said such awful things to you."
"S'okay."
"I love you."
"You too."
He had to push his glasses high up onto his forehead to rub the tears from his eyes as he knelt by Sally's bed, and held her hand with no intention of letting go ever, ever again.
Over the course of the next week and a half Sally was endowed with more attention than she ever would have dreamt of in all her years of planning elaborate escapes from Papa Jeff. Radio, television, newspaper, and magazine people were constantly knocking on the door to her parents' house or ringing the phone. The only thing that would stop them was intervention by not only her DCI of a father but the royal family as well.
The royal intervention came in the form of Prince Gregory absconding his throne, drawing in screaming hordes of media attention from all around the world, let alone London. He gave a press conference that was brief only because he was rubbish at public speaking and kept stammering his way through the announcement. The shock of his people was great, but not as great as when he appointed a long-distant cousin, Mycroft Holmes, as his replacement.
"He will rule you just as well and just as honestly as my father does to this day," promised Greg. "He is brave, honest, and more than capable of great responsibility. Not only that, but he is supported by myself, my father, and his partner. I know he will not let you down in the way I fear I may if I hold my position of power. I would not be happy as your king. I love my people and my country, but I don't want to be a man who stands on high and watches from afar. I want to be among you, a civilian, a civil servant. I want to serve you in the only way I feel I can - through police work. I hope I make my father and my country proud. Thank you." The cameras flashed, the once-prince nodded somberly, and was off to start over again.
Meanwhile, in a posh hospital on the other side of London, John Watson watched his telly and laughed until it made his shoulder hurt too much to do anything but cry. He would never have a military career, and the chances of a successful medical career had been greatly slimmed by Jefferson Hope and that blasted iron candlestick, and it was enough to make any man crumble. But every time he started to let the blackness around his mind encroach an alarmingly annoying, skinny, arrogant young man swooped into the room from the drug rehabilitation wing and bickered with him. He had his eye on a little place on Baker Street, near Scotland Yard, and would John like to be his flatmate now that he was no longer needed to serve the royal family? It wasn't a war zone, but Sherlock vowed to make life just as interesting as one. How could John do anything but accept?
Two months after she was freed from Papa Jeff's house for good, Sally left her bedroom door open and was able to catch one of Greg's elusive visits before he left. She careened out of her desk chair and down the stairs as the front door gently closed, rushing past her parents and into the front garden to see a motorbike idling in the drive. "Just where are you going?" she called archly at the young man striding toward the death machine.
Greg spun around with a helmet dangling from his hands, looking sheepish. "I..."
"You've been coming 'round at least twice a week since I got here and never once stopped to say hello to me," she continued with hands on her hips.
"Yeah, I..." he muttered, biting his lip. "I guess I just."
"Just what? You think you can just forget about me? After everything that happened, after everything you said? The paparazzi aren't interested in either of us anymore now that Mycroft's in the palace; what's there to be scared of?"
With a strained sigh, Greg dropped his helmet and shrugged. "That stunt I pulled with the jackets almost got you and John killed," he finally admitted. "Didn't think you'd want-"
"Well maybe I can make my own decisions," she cut him off. "John's fine; I saw him yesterday. I'm fine too."
"Are you?" asked Greg with an arched eyebrow.
"I-" She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes for a moment.
Yes, sometimes it was still hard, especially after Alice's interrogation confirmed that Sally had lost a year of her life drugged in the cellar of Jeff Hope's house. The memories came back slowly from that time, only minutes of clarity between being stuck with needles, and yes, sometimes she woke up in the night thinking she was still trapped down there and crying for her mama. Yes, sometimes shadows or raised voices or jerky movements still made her cringe or outright yelp. Yes, sometimes a turn of phrase overheard on the telly made her bawl like an inconsolable infant. And yes, 'sometimes' meant 'at least once every two days.'
She opened her eyes and smiled. "It's getting better every day. Now are you going to show me how to ride that thing or not?"
There were no sunsets to blaze off into, as it was the middle of a winter afternoon and very cloudy. There was no dramatic score to play them off as the lights faded to black. There was no hopeful polaroid still-frame to burn into the corneas as a memory of that afternoon. None of them needed it. As princes and PAs curled in their His&Her dressing gowns before the fire, as a little flat on Baker Street became a battlefield, as a motorbike helmet fit better than a crown, through the days of police training, all through the force and the danger and drama that they could never quite escape from, those memories were lived and passed on like secondhand clothes or love-worn dolls to those who came after. And though how they lived was not always happy, as life is meant to be, it was, against all odds, forever.
The end.