Disclaimer: I don't own "Sherlock Holmes" or any of its characters. That all belongs to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Guy Ritchie, etc.
Warning: Mentions of drug use in this chapter, and dysfunctional family delusions.
Inspired by: "Pity the Child" from the musical Chess.
May 30th, 1891
Two days later, and the case had not progressed past letting the driver flee. Unfortunately for Watson and Holmes, Lawrence St. James had moved back into his abandoned home and barred any examination from being held there. And so they were forced to withdraw to Baker Street, and come up with a plan. It was ridiculous to let something so trivial get in his way, but the detective knew it couldn't be helped…for now.
Holmes paced the floorboards, pipe clenched between his teeth. Watson had occupied the easy chair, relaxing after yet another check-up with Madeline. The patient had graduated to short hobbles on a crutch, a vast improvement compared to being bedridden. She in turn was on the padded windowsill, watching the passersby go about their business beyond the glass, and the wooden crutch propped on the wall beside her.
"What we need is a diversion. Something has to draw him out of the house for at most an hour. I am certain that the remaining evidence for conviction is hidden within the building," he muttered, clenching his hands behind his back. Expecting some sort of suggestion or retort, he glanced at the shrugging doctor, and then half turned towards the woman seated on the window seat.
Madeline just glared at him, refusing to speak. To say the least, she was less than happy when Sherlock revealed that he'd let Courdray go. She decided that boycotting conversation with him was the route for her to travel. A straight forty-eight hours went by with her speaking to Mrs. Hudson, to Watson, and even to the dog, but not to him. She was denying his very existence, and for some inexplicable reason, it was maddening. Not that he'd ever, ever admit it, of course. To think there was a time that he wished he could shut her up, but at that moment he would have preferred to hear her talk directly to him.
"Still on that, then?" he remarked, leaning against the mantle in mock boredom. Deducing that it was the right moment to ruffle some feathers, he continued, "Women and their emotions…"
Some feathers were ruffled indeed; it seemed in fact that all of her plumage was flared up. She narrowed her eyes in disgust, the green in them turning a sickly color.
"Oh, the…right!" Watson suddenly shouted, jumping out of his seat and running out the door. Hell's fury was about to rivaled in mere seconds, and he had no wish to be caught in the crossfire. "Coming, Mrs. Hudson!"
"How DARE you insinuate that I'm merely being emotional?!" she yelped, pointing a finger at the leftover man. Holmes only blinked, and was completely calm in the face of her rage.
"Well, you are being overly excited at the moment, my dear lady."
Madeline scoffed, "Excuse me, Sherlock, but how can you expect me to approve of what you did?!"
"I never do anything without a purpose, Mrs. St. James. If I'd taken him in, four other innocent lives would've been lost as well as his," Sherlock explained yet again. The repetitive force-feeding of the same story over and over was grating, even on his nerves.
"He could've been lying about his family situation!"
He groaned in exasperation, "For the love of God, woman, I know what I'm doing! Stop being so infuriating!"
Jerking back from the force of his words, her head bounced off the windowpane. Hissing from the pain, Madeline pressed the heel of her good hand to her head. A moment's silence passed between them, and they purposefully ignored the argument to move on. Not that Madeline wanted that at all; on the contrary, she wanted to fight him on it.
A part of her, the part that was the disciplined little girl she used to be, was reprimanding her for arguing with a man. It wasn't her place to do so…not even if she felt that it was wrong. But the larger part, the one that had been unfettered by her accident and was always in her heart, refused to let the matter drop without a struggle. Once she had been removed from her old life through broken limbs and lost blood, she saw no reason why she should let the problems in her life just go unattended any longer.
'Look where that led me,' she thought to herself, pivoting her body so that she wouldn't have to look at him anymore. Her mind wandered, and she missed Watson's return and the eventual squabble the two men had. Home was just past the glass, down the streets, and hopefully devoid of her brother-in-law.
'How could they let that man get away? '
"I do not have to stay here and have my objectives questioned, especially by the two of you!" Holmes' crowing cut through her brain's fog. Glancing over her shoulder, she watched as the detective hastily threw off his smoking jacket and picked up an overcoat.
John rolled his eyes. "Come now, old chap, you don't have to…"
"No. This egregious hostility is entirely unbecoming. I am beginning to suspect the weight of current events is too much for your minds, and so I'll excuse this rash behavior. By the time you both have recovered from your lapses in judgment pertaining to me, I shall be back," Sherlock countered, clapping a hat upon his head and dashing out the door. The door slammed heavily behind him, causing the duo remaining to jump at the noise. For the first time that afternoon, Madeline felt the slide of guilt glaze over her stomach.
"He'll return soon?" she asked, her voice wavering uncertainly. Watson's shoulders drooped, his lips turning down at the corners.
"Unlikely. I wouldn't expect him back for perhaps a day or so," he muttered, settling down in the chair again. "I hardly challenge him on his methods, but then again he has more to consider than his own ideas when a client is this close to a case and so I must interfere. It's not a common enough occurrence for him to do so."
"How do you mean?"
"Generally someone comes to Holmes with a problem, they tell him the story, and they go. He sees them once more when he collects his payment, but that is the extent of his interaction with clients. To have someone here for the entire process, to have their feelings on display all the while tends to be a tad…unsettling for him. He has to maintain that cold, calculating persona…he has to have distance between you and him. No matter if you're living with him briefly or not."
She digested the thought, but turned her own observations onto John.
"There is no distance between us. There never will be."
'We're of one blood now…'
The doctor closed his eyes. "Exactly. And he's well aware of that fact. My intrusion has not improved his disposition, either. He doesn't like it when I pose theories about whether he does things right or not. So for now he needs a literal space away from us, and he is welcome to it."
Madeline's gaze remained glued on the door sealing the rooms off from the rest of the house.
"I see," she said, biting her lip briefly. Gladstone waddled out from his hiding spot underneath the bed and trotted over to the pair, oblivious to the mutual feelings of regret roiling inside them. Bending down to pet the dog, Watson let out a deep sigh and gathered up his coat and bag minutes later.
"Right…same time next week, then," he said, attempting to lighten the mood of his patient. He succeeded slightly; Madeline allowed her inner conflict to melt a bit and crack a smile.
"Very well. Good day, doctor."
With a tight grin, he tipped his hat to her, and exited the room, leaving her alone yet again.
Thereafter the afternoon drifted into evening, and then straight on until night. Madeline puttered around the rooms, adjusting to the crutch. She could find nothing better to do, or at least she couldn't find something to totally distract her from the day's escapade. It was dreary, spending all that time with only anger and guilt as companions, but somehow the clock hands went around and it was time to get some sleep. Sherlock, like Watson had predicted, had not returned by then, and after finding herself staring at the same old books and the same old dog and the same old picture of that same woman on the cluttered table (very beautiful, she thought her to be), she decided that it would just be better to go on to bed without waiting up. Silently she went through the routine Mrs. Hudson assisted her with, donning a nightgown and brushing her teeth, before collapsing on the mattress.
"Holmes has to be out of his mind if he expected me to be ecstatic about his decision," Madeline said to Gladstone as he somehow clambered onto the bed beside her. Scratching between his ears, she snorted. "And I must be mad if I'm speaking to a dog about this. Well, at least I have you on my side in case he comes back in a miserable state, right?"
The bulldog just rested his jowls on her bandaged leg, and snored away. She sighed and leaned back against the pillows; there was her answer, she supposed. The candle by her bedside blurred, and she wasn't even aware that she was dozing until the booming crash from the adjoining room woke her up at midnight. Sitting bolt upright, her heart hammered in her chest. Was she found out, and her enemies had come to finish the job? Had she woken up in the midst of a robbery?
xXxXxXx
Sherlock, shockingly, had traversed the black streets of London to his home, rather than spend it in one of the rundown hovels he leased a time or two. His day, spent alternately staking out Lawrence's home and wandering up and down Sloane Street, was somewhat productive. He just had to get out of that house. Nothing ever really bothered him much, save for not knowing the right avenue to pursue on a case. This singular event was irksome, for sure.
'She has to understand that it was better for all parties involved. Dooming him would've been wrong,' he thought more than once that afternoon. He stopped by a lamppost, pounding his fist against it in aggravation. 'Infernal woman. Ridiculous case!'
One hour turned to two, and two turned to seven before Holmes realized that the sun had set. With night upon him, and his mind on haywire, he snuck back into the Baker Street house through the top window. Avoiding the mess in the dark, he removed the box which held his needle and other concoctions. He felt, as he began loading the syringe with a little bit of everything, that the only solution to his predicament was to take his consciousness out of it entirely.
'Perhaps it'll give me a new perspective…Although the last time I did this during a case, I came to while hanging from the ceiling and Watson complaining that I claimed to be a monkey. It would be interesting to see what will happen this time.'
Throwing caution to the wind, he indulged his addiction and waited for the effects to take hold.
Minutes later, his vision expanded and contracted, the room's contents floating around him. His heartbeat sped up, and euphoria spread through his veins. It was like he was back in his childhood home, occupying his time however he wanted. Feeling younger, swifter, more agile, he began cavorting around the room, tipping the couch he'd been calling his bed for weeks over and giggling.
That is, until the harsh shouts of a household in crisis rang in his ears. A pounding on the door, which in the back of his mind he knew was really the pounding of the blood in his head, caused him to knock over a chair.
"Hush, you unreasonable chair!" grumbled his grainy voice, reflecting that of a man on the edge. To the panels, he murmured, "Get away, away I say!"
xXxXxXx
"Holmes," Madeline muttered, rubbing her eyes and breathing a bit easier when she acknowledged his voice. More squawks of protests and hushes were directed at the chair, along with ramblings about "he said I couldn't" and "she is awful", and it piqued her interest significantly. Using a hairpin, she pinned up the skirt of her nightgown to allow her more movement before grabbing her crutch. Slowly but surely she padded through the darkness, encouraged by the low gaslight shining through the cracks of the folding partition to pursue this line of inquiry.
When she stretched her hand out to pull the panels back, they suddenly were whisked out of her grip. Sherlock stood there, looking the complete definition of a wreck. His face was flushed and sweaty, his dark eyes darting all around and unfocused. His suspenders were halfway unclipped, resting against the backs of his trouser legs, and his shirt was completely undone. A rank odor, mixing sweat and mud, floated off of him.
"Oh, you!" he cried upon seeing her, sounding exuberant at the sight of her. "I knew it was you!"
'Who else would it be at this time of night?' she thought sarcastically, but kept her mouth shut.
"For a moment, I thought you were her, or him, and I would've had to hide," he said, rushing towards the back wall and leaning against it. Glancing around, Madeline wondered at his spurt of madness. "They're always angry now. I'm used to it, though."
"Who are they?" she asked, clomping a little closer. The room was bare, save for a few tables, a box and a chair or two. Her crutch smacked an empty syringe and caused it to skitter underneath an overturned couch. Groaning, she reflected, 'Well, now I know the answer as to why he's like this…his addiction decided to act up again.'
"What do you mean 'who are they'? You had to have seen them on the way into the house," he said, clicking his tongue at her ignorance. "I'm surprised you managed to get by them, they always know whose doing what. As do I. I know a lot about people just by looking at clothes and faces. Just like I know a lot about them. She says it's a gift, but he calls it impractical."
She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I have no notion of whom you're talking about."
"Chuh! Mother and Father! They live here…well, Papa threatens to go, since he and Mum always fight."
A cold slab of dread pressed against her stomach, and she swallowed hard on the dryness accumulating in her throat. Rapidly Holmes dropped into a chair, shushing her when she asked what was wrong. His dark eyes turned black as he directed them towards the shadows. They latched onto the other doorway out of the rooms, as if someone was coming through them.
A shadowy man from the past, the father who he did not know was dead or alive, pointed at him. Sherlock could see the bag in his hand, the shock of black hair, the ice-blue of the parent's cold eyes. The weak chin drooped, and he opened his mouth to speak.
"Papa is leaving for good. Mum has thrown his belongings out the window. Papa calls me strange, unnatural…because I see things he can't. He says Mycroft is better off away, just like him," he whispered almost casually, though his expression was one of illness. "It's better this way."
A woman of slight stature and golden hair appeared next, her careworn face creased with anxiety. Her eyes, rather than streaming with tears, were pouring out blood. Her jaw was forever contorted, opened wide for the fires of her life to flood out.
All feelings of fury were long forgotten as Madeline crossed over to him. Glancing at the shut door, she blinked in confusion.
"Holmes, you're dreaming…no one's there."
Snatching her arm, he began to shake while continuing calmly, "Can you not see? She's letting someone else into the house, and she doesn't tell me who, but I know he's evil. He's after my mother's settlement. He shuts me away…and the cycle repeats."
"You're hallucinating, it's just you and me here," the woman who actually sat beside him said in a placating tone, patting his shoulder as comfortingly as she could. He jerked back in his chair, wrestling with some unseen force briefly.
The mother clawed him, butchered him with words of rage, and the mysterious man, whose face remained hidden, stood stolidly in the background. Her black eyes bled more, spilling drops of blood onto the floor.
"Mum calls me a liar, says she hates me and my jealousy. I don't want to see her hurt…she doubts me, doubts my intentions," he gurgled, the stark contrast between his voice and body evident. He went rigid as the image of his mother melted into the boards at his feet, and then lucidly collapsed after her.
"Sherlock!" cut in Madeline, dropping down with some difficulty to his level. Holmes' body began to convulse, all the while he kept talking.
"Must get out…I can live on my skills without her…she'll never see me…never again…won't go back…"
Given her father's own sordid difficulties with addictions, Madeline thought she would've been more prepared for an occurrence such as this. Still, it wasn't the drugs that caused the parent to shake and hallucinate, rather it was the alcohol. Going by what little she knew, the young lady hovering at Holmes' side laid her hand upon his brow. Feeling his burning skin beneath her fingertips, she decided it would be best to find him some cold water. At first, when she retrieved the pitcher on the washstand and pushed it across the length of the floor, she was going to dab him with a wet cloth. But she was desperate to stop Sherlock's ramblings, his shaking, and so she dumped all of the cool liquid onto his face.
The shock of the water splashing caused him to flop around gracelessly for another minute or two before he finally rested face-down on the floorboards. Grabbing his shirtsleeve, Madeline rolled him onto his side to make sure he was breathing. His chest rose and fell sharply, and his gaze raked over her. The insanity that had clouded it over was dissipating, and she fell back against the floor herself, wilting with relief.
"Thank God," she sputtered, a creaking on the stairs catching her attention. A soft knock on the door thundered in her ears.
"Is everything alright? I heard some thumping up here," Mrs. Hudson queried sleepily, waiting beyond the portal. Propping herself on her elbows, Madeline chuckled a bit to cover Holmes' wounded grunts.
"Aye, I just fell out of bed, but I'm alright. Good night!"
Crossing her fingers for luck, she was grateful that the housekeeper didn't give the tone of her voice or the direction it come from a second thought as she trod back to her own rooms. All was quiet again in 221B. It gave St. James some time to think, to process all that had happened.
She would've had to be blind and dumb to not see that she had triggered this reaction. With complications from the case compiling with her questioning of his motives, it made him snap when he turned to his normal respite, cocaine. He must have turned to the substance out of frustration, and it only landed him into more trouble. The parallels that he drew between the current situation and now were obvious to her. Perhaps the rejection from his mother was what caused him to keep only acquaintances with clients, with women. If they got too close, they could rebuke his ideas, and turn away if things didn't seem as they appear.
'And shrieking doubts in his face while he's trying to figure out the solution to your problem doesn't help,' her brain chided in a sing-song voice. Smashing the shame down long enough to salvage a pillow and blanket from the bed, Madeline helped the now-snoozing consulting detective get more comfortable. Once his head was propped and his body covered, she turned to creep back to bed. Pausing on her way, words spilled out from her lips into the darkness.
"Please understand, I will never agree with this action of yours. Some of it was, I suppose I could concede, decent…to some extent. But how would you take the news that one of the people responsible for nearly killing you was able to slip away, allowed to go by someone who you…trusted?" she said, compelled to explain herself. A snore was the response. "You wouldn't be too pleased, either, I wager. I can't forgive him for what he's done. It's not the 'why' I am concerned with, but just the fact that he got away. Your methods are your own, I respect that, but I can't let it go."
His leg twitched, but that was all he did. Straightening herself out, she coughed momentarily.
"I know it sounds like I'm contradicting myself, and that it's insane to apologize for it when the person you're directing the apology to is unconscious, but I am sorry. And for what it's worth…the hell you've gone through is not something…that your friends will ever put you through again."
Bidding him good-night, she managed to get back to the main bed and descend into a deep slumber, totally unaware that the doped man on the floor maneuvered his body to face the direction she'd gone. Having borne her speech in silence, Sherlock incoherently pondered the words until his eyelids drifted shut.
New perspective indeed.
Author's note: I've wanted to write this chapter for a long time, let me tell you. I think Sherlock Holmes has "mommy issues", and that's why he's so discourteous to women in general. According to the research I've done, cocaine can make you hallucinate, and I figured that in his hallucinations, Holmes might see memories of his home life he's repressed for years since this case deals with an incredibly dysfunctional family. Thanks for reading again, review and all that, see you guys later!