A/n: Mild Profanity.
Chapter 5
The service is hasty, the coffin clumsily lowered into the ground, wet clumps of soil shovelled into the hole. Attendees are scant, partially due to wet weather, but mostly because someone who used to reside in the sticks would not have boasted of many friends.
No one sees the lone figure, hidden amidst the shrubbery in the sea of headstones.
She watches from a distance, having come to terms that her presence will only serve as a painful reminder to the bereaved that she is the sole reason for their misfortune.
Clothes stick to skin. Rain trickles down her face. They taste of salt.
When all has left but the dead, she remains, numbness spreading from within.
One more to join the masses in the dirt.
(1 year 9 months ago)
A split-second of white brilliance illuminates the city, and on its heels a deafening crack which muffles the male singer strumming his acoustic guitar on the radio. Streets of buildings and pavements meld together, neither distinguishable from the other. Only the luminous lights powered by electricity turns the city into one worth venturing out for under stormy skies. The marks of multiple knife wounds on the window have long since turned into streams coursing from the dam that had broken overhead, and the glowing bulbs of the city become unfocused blots of colour. The driving rain pelts the asphalt road, creating splashes the way fish when trapped in a net.
She had just turned eight. Mom and Dad took them to one of the floating houses on the sea built on planks and pontoons. In the grey light of dawn, she would creep outside, watching the sun peek over the horizon, where she imagines the endless water would finally meet the soul mate whose moods it never fails to reflect. She would sit there for at least an hour, watching the sun's fiery beauty bringing forth shades of pink, orange, and purple.
On the floating house was an old, wooden contraption that, if spun inwards, would heave the net up to reveal their catch, fish flopping in panic at being snatched from their comfort zone into unfamiliar territory.
She was not permitted to touch it. "You might hurt your hands," Mary Watson had reprimanded sternly before brushing unseen dirt from her palms as though touching the wooden beams had somewhat contaminated them.
Back then, it was understood that the parents' word was law. Questioning the elders was not a common practice in their home.
For the rest of the trip, she watched from the sidelines as her elder brother got the privilege of working the beams. Nails left marks on her flesh. For many nights after, the last thought before falling asleep was to wonder why her hands were different.
"Looks like there's an accident up ahead," the taxi driver remarks casually, dragging her back to the present.
Water droplets on the glass glimmer a pulsing red and blue. Her eyes snag on a stain on the mat of the cab floor, and she tries to deduce if it is the work of a passenger who'd been too intoxicated to realize what he was doing. Still, the rise and fall of the piercing sirens beat relentlessly against her eardrums.
By the time they get back to the Brownstone, the downpour has turned into a light drizzle. She pays in cash the figure that the analog numbers in glowing red show on the meter, then, steps out into the night chill.
Lights are on, just like they always are in the dead of the night now. He'll be awake. He always is when she gets home, at eleven at night or three in the morning. Sometimes, he sits on the third step of the stairway with a childlike look of expectation, hands balled up on knees, shoulders hunched, with the space around him conspicuously empty.
She wishes he wouldn't wait up for her.
Rummaging through her purse, she finds a mint and pops it in her mouth. Like it might actually help to mask the smell of alcohol. Only God knows if it's more for his sake or hers that she keeps up the pretense.
They lurk in the shadows. Familiar images flash behind closed eyelids, scenes from recollections that have been carefully tucked away like relics in an old treasure chest, but recent events have drawn the memories out from deep waters.
The pictures flicker and skip like an old film from the seventies. They eventually go to black, where the nightmare takes form.
Always the same stretch of long, empty hallway, the slow approach to the double doors, the glimmer of cold, florescent lights from the edge of the scalpel, the uncontrollable tremor, rising waves of nausea, and cold sweat dotting her forehead. The drop of blood plummeting, the clink of scalpel colliding with the ground, the lone sound in heavy silence.
Nobody else is around; no one but whoever lies on the operating table.
And the hands that gave her worth: stained with the life she'd taken.
Panic would wake her, clawing from her innermost depth up her chest to her throat, and she would dry-heave over the edge of the bed before falling back on the tangled sheets.
It is not unlike the nightmare she used to have.
The only difference is instead of one still, ashen face staring at her, there are four.
Mornings have taken on a slightly different routine. No more finding stray tortoises hiking up her blanket or having him shock her into full consciousness. Gone is his habit of appearing in her room during the wee hours of the morning.
She pushes aside the blanket, struggling to an upright position, and squints in the bright sunshine. Eyes circle the empty room and land on the stack of legal letters mixed with Hallmark cards expressing their condolences; neither of which she feels inspired to go through. The lawyers' letters cannot be thrown in the fireplace, but the rest might save them some wood. They are but paper and a compilation of phrases that she once bestowed to her clients, sayings that now only mock instead of uplift, and they run like a string of empty, meaningless words through her head.
The thoughts fade, but in the looming silence, a far more intimidating threat resides.
Breath slowly hisses through clenched teeth. She rubs her hands over her face and swears, but the one-word rant does little to relieve the tension that sits in her chest like a giant boulder.
Without consent, life bought a ticket on a roller coaster that has gone off the tracks. Only the eventual crash would stop this downward spiral, and who knows, she might even welcome the release from the turbulent day-by-day stabs at normalcy.
In the bathroom, a combination of dark circles, disheveled hair, and deep, unsearchable things stare from her reflection. Eyes slide from the mirror to the shaver lying not too far off. Familiar voices crowd her head, suggesting that a red line or two might help with the emotional congestion.
There is no harm in entertaining those thoughts. She knows better than to cut herself.
"Bloodying your wrists isn't the purpose of this exercise, but it certainly is the only result you will accomplish if you persist in twisting like that."
The words that grate on her nerves are in reference to the attempt to disengage herself from a pair of handcuffs. She bites back a growl of frustration and jiggles the metal constrains in disgust, letting the pin fall to the ground. She has successfully wrangled her way out of them before, but all she has to show for her hard work at the moment is the reddened skin of her wrists, rubbed raw by the restraints.
And just when she thinks Sherlock Holmes cannot get more ornery, he sets out to prove her wrong.
"I suggest if you can't do it, give it up."
"What," she snaps. "Is your problem?"
He doesn't bother to look up from where he is touching up the tattoo on his forearm a few feet away. "I'm afraid I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."
"Like hell you don't. You've been throwing a tantrum from the time we left, and now you're telling me you don't have a problem. I mean," she throws chained hands in the air. "What? What happened? Did I unintentionally mess up some order of yours today and, God forbid, step on the toes of the great Sherlock Holmes?"
"Surely you haven't already forgotten. I specifically told you I was quite capable of making that trip down to Carlson's apartment myself."
"And surely you haven't forgotten," she mimics. "That I am a fully-grown adult, Sherlock. I don't need someone to tell me if I should stay home from work, and I don't need you to make decisions for me. I told you, if I'd wanted to meet Ty to discuss my legal issues, I would've called him."
"But it wasn't just the going through of those issues that bothered you, was it?"
Sometimes she hates that intuitive nature of his.
"Cutting off every connection that you have with a painful recollection isn't going to help, Watson, and perhaps if you'd met with him, you wouldn't have had been so unfocused."
"Is this what it's about?" She says incredulously. "My losing focus? Well, I'm sorry my brain was too scattered to get anything from the crime scene. For God's sakes, Sherlock, I've just started to get back on my feet. What were you expecting?
"I was expecting—"
"You told me 'work is the best antidote for sorrow'."
"That was before," he raises his voice. "You placed yourself in danger by getting distracted with a stuffed animal."
"Oh, so now you decide that doesn't apply anymore."
"You want to talk about subjectivity." He hops up from his chair and starts pacing, fingers drumming his side. "Okay. How about when I was the one who needed counseling, you insisted that I needed to talk because it was the first step to recovery, eh? And you? Now? Whatever happened to all that advice about having to open up?"
She meets his words with a stony glare.
"Honestly, Watson, I find it all to be quite hypocritical. Talk about trampling on your own work, which, if you ask me, is precisely what you're doing. You can go on and on about having a support system, learning to share private thoughts with others, all that emotional junk you sell," he gestures in the air with disgust, pacing like a wild animal. "It's pathetic. If I were your counselor and had to grade you on progress, you'd get a big, fat zero because you fail at taking your own advice!"
"Because of course I care about the grade you give me," She returns, livid. "And who made you the judge of everything? The great Sherlock Holmes, master of deduction can now appoint himself—"
"—to the point that you almost got yourself shot today. Fat load of help—"
"What I do is my business—"
"And which business are you referring to? The one you have with alcohol, or the picking up men at night? Or maybe the one where you use your job as a tranq—"
Shackled hands slam into his chest before she even realizes she has shot out from her chair.
He stumbles back against the table, sentence unfinished.
Her voice pierces the silence, trembling with white-hot rage.
"What the fuck do you know about me?"
Anger vibrates through the air. Hot tears betray her, spilling over the edge. She swipes angrily at them, but like that day in the graveyard, they don't stop.
He straightens, shifts from one foot to the other, stops, then back to the rocking motion. Over and over. Then, it comes to a total stop, and he says quietly, "I think that you try to be your own support system."
Moments pass. He comes to stand before her, feet shuffling on the floor. A tentative look flickers in her direction, down, and back to her. He fidgets, clearly unnerved at the wetness coating her face.
The motions are slow and hesitant, awkward in its unfamiliarity. Arms move to encircle her. He holds her loosely at first, as though experimenting with a new theory, then lightly tugs her into an embrace.
Slowly, tense muscles relax, and she relents to rest her head against his chest. It is a strange situation, to be in such close proximity, to hear his heart thumping in her ear. Breathing slows to match his. The last of the anger is expelled between her lips, the rage dissipating as quickly as it had erupted.
When he retrieves the key to the cuffs from the arm of the chair, he asks her what it was about the stuffed animal that had held her attention.
In her mind's eye, she sees the figurines of little dainty ballerinas on pointe, the army of plush toys, and at the end of the row, a teddy with one loose eye that smiles at her with its sewn mouth. Cotton peeks out from where broken thread used to hold the brown velvety fabric together.
"There was a boy in grade school. He transferred in late in the semester, and he had this…toy that he would carry around. A bear." The words roll off her tongue easier than expected. "It was a dirty thing with patches of fur missing, one ear gone, and you can imagine that it made him an easy target for all the bullies in school. He was constantly getting shoved in lockers, hit in the face, his homework flushed down the toilet. All since day one."
She remembers watching the class tyrant saunter down the row, shoving the boy off his chair to scribble insults on his textbook. It was an old book with marks all over as though the eraser had worn out the pages many times. She knows because she sat by him.
"Once, they hid the teddy during recess and wouldn't give it back to him. At some point, I got really mad and tried to make them return it. I ended up with a bloody nose. They told my Mom it wouldn't happen again."
She chews on her inner lip. Nobody mentioned the real victim in that incident.
"I went home, and Oren made me tell him what really happened. You should've seen my brother when he came back home after school the next day. He was all scrapped up and bleeding, but he had the bear in his hands."
Sherlock looks at her without saying a word. She holds out her hands, and he inserts the key into the lock, releasing her with a click.
The cuffs are marked with blood from cutting into her flesh. He brings her the medication and helps her wrap the bandages around her wrists.
"Did it hurt?"
"Did what hurt?"
She nods to the tattoo that extends from his shoulder down his arm, showing past his shirtsleeve. "That."
"Considering that the needle penetrates the first three layers of skin at the rate of one thousand two—"
"That's not what I meant."
Something changes in his expression. "It did." His tone is rougher. Less guarded. "But I found the physical pain to be quite…liberating."
That night, she thinks of the fine curved lines of intertwining green. Of words seared into her mind, singing to her a lullaby.
Eyes fall shut.
She dreams of the wide, open sea, and the bright blue sky. Of yellow school buses and tattered second-hand books. Of ragged teddy bears and poems being carved into her skin, and in the dream, she imagines she hears the faint sounds of the violin playing Chopin's nocturne in the distance while the first rays of the morning extend from the horizon.
It had taken little effort to goad her on in the afternoon. From where he stands, his words had only been a catalyst for the blow-up that was eventually going to happen, but it became more than just mere goading when he witnessed the flippant dismissal of the danger she had placed herself in. It had infuriated him, and it makes him wonder if the bulk of his words stemmed from the fear of losing her and the frustration that she was gradually distancing herself from him.
He recalls the countless hours that have been spent loitering outside her bedroom, the door cracked open to let in a sliver of light. He would plop himself down on the top step of the stairs, rub fists over his face, and spend a torturous minute or two mulling over the unexpected reversal of positions in the Brownstone before the undercurrent of agitation causes him to pace again.
It is a wonder the floor isn't full of scuffmarks from his shoes.
On many occasions, the thought that he ought to offer some form of comfort runs through his mind. The question, however, was never if he ought to, but how it should be done, because he isn't good at that sort of thing.
When rosin has been meticulously cleaned from each string, he sets the violin back in its case. The last note still lingers, tremulous, in the air. As the last lock snaps into place, his cell rings.
"Sherlock." The voice washes over him, a caress that leaves lacerations on his heart, and sends tingles down his spine. "Long time on see. What say you and I have a little chat?"