5.
Two weeks after moving into 221b Baker Street, John was making a valiant effort to read an article on medicine and Sherlock was draped across his chair, tapping. John was just getting on the verge of making some action, whether to move to another location or throttle his roommate he wasn't sure which, when some measure of recognition came to him from the apparently random strikes of the violin bow against the table. His annoyance forgotten, he set aside his article and looked at Sherlock with surprise. He let the taps run on for a minute to get an idea of what was going on.
"That's Morse Code," he said at last, "I'm-bored-I'm-bored-John-bored-boring-bored"
"And finally, the soldier takes notice," Sherlock answered, "And it only took him twenty-four minutes." At least he stopped tapping.
"Of course you know Morse Code," John muttered and considered returning to the article now that the distraction had stopped.
"Since I was eight," Sherlock answered, and John's interest was momentarily swayed once more towards his roommate. Sherlock said so little about his childhood.
"Eight?" he asked, "Did you go to some sort of spy training school?"
"Mycroft taught me," Sherlock answered, "He was a bit obsessed with teaching me codes and non-verbal forms of communication around that time.
"Ah," John said, and then, after a moment, "Did Mycroft go to some sort of spy training school?"
"He taught himself at the same time," Sherlock answered, and still looking half dead to the world, he made some movements with his hands. John recognized it as sign language, but the little bit of that language he knew was not enough to translate.
'Sorry,' he signed back when he caught Sherlock turning to actually look at him, his expression interested, 'I don't know sign language. I can finger spell.' At that Sherlock shot him the 'how can you be so stupid' look and turned away again. Sherlock resumed his brooding and John resumed his article. The silence lasted for nearly five minutes before Sherlock was tapping again.
This time Sherlock counted eight minutes of determined silence before John threw the article down. Sherlock looked up hopefully, ready for anything that might relieve him of the dull, empty void his mind had fallen into. With his bow, he tapped out 'problem-John' while giving a questioning stare. John stood, whether with intentions of violence or simply to go somewhere else Sherlock wasn't certain. John was fascinating.
Then came the knock at the door. Holmes recognized that knock.
"A case, at last!" he exclaimed, swinging himself out of the chair and rushing past John to let Lestrade inside. John slowly relaxed his hands from fists as the inspector explained about the body found in a park. Sherlock listened intently before going for his coat. He tossed John's at him with a cry of "Come along, John!" before rushing out the door. John considered, briefly, sitting back down to finish his article as Lestrade gave him a commiserating look. With a sigh, gave in and put on the coat.
The body turned out to be that of a child situated on the bank to a small lake. Grim faces were all around, and the glares sent towards Sherlock were much more vicious than normal as he animatedly expected the body with a gleam of excitement in his eye, spouting a stream of observations that he might as well have pulled from thin air for all the connections most of the people present were able to make. Under normal circumstances, John would enjoy watching Sherlock go. With the body of a child lying before them, it was hard to retain the necessary detachment. Finally, Sherlock called him over to conduct his own investigation. With a slight bit of reluctance, John complied. Officers milled about while he looked, talking in hushed voices if they talked at all.
"It appears to be a child," John said, beginning with the obvious, "Going by the clothes and the hairstyle I would say a male, approximately six or seven years of age. He's not been dead long. He has a wound on his forehead which appears to have happened in close approximation to his death, but judging from his color, death was brought on by asphyxiation. Considering that he is soaking wet and it hasn't rained, it looks as though he hit his head, fell into the water, and drowned."
He looked up, half expecting Sherlock to leap in, call him an imbecile, and list half a dozen facts that he had missed, but Sherlock had wandered a bit away, looking in the direction of the lake. John stood of slowly from his squat over the child.
Suddenly, Sherlock spun around towards Lestrade, an odd look upon his face. "Why am I here?" he demanded, "Accidental death, there's no mystery here."
"And how do you know it was an accident?" Anderson demanded with a scowl on his face, "Someone could have hit him on the head and dropped him in the water."
"We need to know who he is," Lestrade said quickly, anticipating a rant that would explain exactly why this was almost certainly accidental death, a fact which Lestrade was not yet convinced of but if they at least knew who the boy was they'd be on the right track to discover the truth.
"You believe it to be murder," Sherlock stated, before spinning in a sudden circle, eyes taking in everything from the river to the police to the gawkers pausing beyond the tape. "He is a local to this park. His house will be close by and you might even be given a name if you question the elderly individuals populating the park's benches. Come along, John." And he strode away from the scene. John hesitated only a moment before following and Lestrade only tried half heartedly to call Sherlock back. John expected Sherlock to be making for the road to catch a taxi back home, so was surprised when Sherlock slowed once more as soon as they had gone a bit of a ways from the crime scene, well before they left the park.
"John," he said, "I need you to help me. He might have a hiding place elsewhere but is most likely still in the park."
"He…?" John asked, confused.
"Think, John! Why can't you people just think," Sherlock exclaimed with vehement annoyance, his hands clinched tightly into fists and his face expressing a mixture of frustration and passion. John had never seen him quite like this before and it made him a bit nervous. Pacing slightly and swinging his arms about, Sherlock explained.
"The boy was young, as you said, no more than seven years old. He has not been dead long, died this very day in fact, only hours ago, fished out of the lake of this park. Going by the fact that today is Saturday and his clothes were of good make but not quality…could be a case of charity but then look at the grass stains at the knees and hole in the shirt, nice clothes not kept in nice condition…they aren't for school. So he's in the park on a Saturday, doing what? Playing, most likely. Only wound found on him a head wound, no bruising on his arms or face, I'll bet no bruising will be found on his torso. There was a plaster on his elbow, it came off in the water but you can see where it left a mark, but the scrape it covered was small, mostly healed. Nice clothes, no old wounds except a mostly healed and well taken care of cut? What guardian would take that kind of care of a child then let them wander a park alone?"
"Right," John answered, "So he wasn't alone?"
"Of course not. So who would be with him? A parent? A nanny? Could be, but not likely; an adult of any kind would not have let him drown if they had seen it, and if they had not they'd have been frantic looking for him by now. So no adult knows he's missing. That leaves siblings or friends; looking at the age, most likely a sibling. If the sibling had just lost their brother they'd be searching; it's been a few hours, by now they'd have had to tell someone, at the very least we'd see someone searching. No, they were there. They saw it happen. Old enough to be trusted to watch the boy but young enough to not be able to help? They are locals, walked to the park, and trusted to be gone a while. So where would the sibling go, knowing their brother was dead and thinking it is their fault?"
John stared at him, part amazed at his thought process and part horrified by the implications of what he was saying.
"They wouldn't go home, so where would they go?"
"A friend's house?" John suggested.
"Wrong!" Sherlock exclaimed, an almost feverish gleam in his eyes, "They would go to no one because they want no one to know. There is nowhere to go, so they went nowhere. They are most probably still in the park, hiding. You must help me find him."
"Shouldn't we tell the police?" John asked, confused as Sherlock started to pace with rather jerky movements, as though he were extremely angry though John couldn't see why he would be. Perhaps a case surrounding a dead child was just as upsetting to him as it was to everyone else, he just showed it in different ways. Despite all the warnings everyone had given John about Sherlock, John had seen ample evidence that the man did have a heart. He just lacked tact, social niceties, and empathy directed towards strangers.
"No!" Sherlock exclaimed abruptly to John's question, "We do not want the police, unless you want them trampling over the garden and dragging children in for questioning for murder."
"Sherlock, I don't think…" John began doubtfully.
"It wasn't his fault," Sherlock said before John could finish the statement, "We don't need the police questioning him, like he wanted him to die!" John stared at him and Sherlock abruptly turned away. "You know how to speak to children. You're a doctor, you probably took courses on it. Help me find him." And he started walking. Swallowing, John followed.
As expected, it was Sherlock who discovered the child's hiding place. Up in the branches of a tree, John could just make out the child's form after Sherlock pointed out that he was there.
"Hello?" John called up to him. He didn't answer and John turned to look at Sherlock, perhaps to convince him they needed help, but Sherlock had turned away again and was staring out over the lake. Feeling out of his depth, but unable to leave a child alone in this situation, John did the only thing he could think of. He climbed up into the tree. It took him a while; it had been some time since he had last climbed a tree, but he managed to get almost parallel to the child at last. It was a girl; going by height and development she might have been anywhere between eleven and fourteen. From her reactions, though, he guessed younger rather than older. Her face was white and she seemed to be trembling but she wasn't crying. John knew he had to get her out of the tree.
"Hello?" he said again, "Do you need help?" She looked at him but didn't answer. "Don't you want to come down from this tree?" he tried after that. Still nothing.
"My name is John, what's yours?" Still nothing. "It's okay, I'm a doctor. I just want to help you. No? That's okay, too. We can just sit here, then. Nice day for it, isn't it? You know, I haven't climbed a tree in years. I used to, all the time. My sister and I had a special tree we'd go to." The girl still wasn't speaking but she was watching him, listening. "Once we were playing with the neighbor's dog. Throwing sticks for it, you know, and she threw a stick into the street. A car came by just then, didn't see the dog. She was upset; she said she killed it and everyone would hate her. She decided she would live in the tree." The girl opened her mouth, then closed it again. "No one hated her. We knew it was an accident." He waited. She looked at him.
Suddenly, Sherlock's head popped up between the branches. John hadn't even noticed when he had started to climb. Sherlock stared intently at the girl.
"Sister," he mumbled, "Always a sister." She looked at him blankly. Still staring intently, he announced in a stern voice, "It wasn't your fault."
At first it seemed she wasn't going to answer anymore than she had answered John. Then, finally, in a tiny voice, she said, "You don't know that."
"I do know that," Sherlock answered, voice still firm, not allowing for any argument of the matter, "I'm a detective. It's my job to know these things." She stared at him silently.
"I'm Sherlock," he told her, and held out a hand to be shook, as though they were meeting under perfectly normal circumstances. The girl reached out for the hand automatically. "What's your name?"
"Anna," she said.
"Nice to meet you, Anna." She stared at him.
"Ahem," Sherlock said, and then in a stage whisper, "Nice to meet you, too." A smile briefly flashed across her face, and then she mumbled something that might have been 'nicetomeetyou'.
"Do you like ducks, Anna?" A dark look came over her face.
"I hate them." Sherlock waited. In a quieter voice, the girl provided, "Andy likes them."
"Anna…" John said, after it became apparent that Sherlock wasn't, "What happened to Andy?" She remained silent, but something about her expression was less frozen than before, as though it might break at any minute. "We won't blame you," John added in a gentle voice, "I promise."
"He wanted to see the ducks," she answered, and suddenly she was sobbing and practically throwing herself at a very startled and panicked looking Sherlock. He grabbed a tight hold onto the branches out of instinct to keep them from falling out of the tree while looking over her head frantically at John.
'Hold her' John mouthed, making a motion with one of his arms. Slowly, Sherlock shifted his position so that he could hold onto the tree one-handed, and brought the other around the trembling body trying to bury itself into his side. She was saying something, but most of the words were lost in Sherlock's coat. John did make out the words 'sorry' a lot. He blinked his own eyes, a pain forming in his chest from watching the distressed child and knowing that this was a pain that could not be easily erased. Whether she blamed herself or not, her brother was still dead.
"Come on," John said, "Let's get out of this tree." Sherlock slowly rubbed the girl's back, his hand stopping briefly at the collar of her jacket, pulling it back then dropping it and he simply held her again.
"We'll stay here," he decided, "Tell Lestrade the family they are looking for is Addams." John nodded his head but still hesitated to leave Sherlock and the child alone in the tree. Finally deciding that it could do no good to force Anne down before she was ready, he left.
He was a bit surprised to realize he'd been in the tree for nearly half an hour. When he got to the crime scene the body had already been taken away but Lestrade was still there. He looked surprised to see John, and even more surprised when John gave him the name. He was still explaining when Anderson approached them, saying a woman was looking for her children, Andrew and Anne.
"Is her name Mrs. Addams?" Lestrade asked while John turned his head to look at her. Anderson looked surprised until he looked at John.
"Did the freak deign to help us mere mortals after all?" he asked, "And where is he now?"
"With Anna," John answered shortly. Lestrade looked grim as he prepared to talk to the woman.
"Anne!" the mother exclaimed suddenly, and everyone turned to see Sherlock approaching, the child in his arms. She was large enough for the sight to look almost comical if the situation weren't so grim; if Sherlock weren't so tall he probably couldn't have managed it at all. Anne reacted to her mum's voice and Sherlock let her go, letting mother and daughter run to each other.
Anne was sobbing again, trying to speak while her mother held her, a stricken expression on her face as though she already half knew what had happened. Sherlock approached them slowly.
"It wasn't her fault. No matter what, remember that," he told the mother as she stared at him.
"Sherlock," Lestrade began, a hand at his elbow in an attempt to steer him away from the family but Sherlock shook him off. Sherlock looked calmer now, almost as though his face were made out of stone. It was almost scary to behold.
"Your son wanted to feed the ducks and she let him run ahead. There was no one around to help. It was an accident." The mother's eyes grew huge as her face drained of color, her arms hugging tighter to her daughter. "It wasn't her fault." Then, finally, Sherlock allowed John to pull him away.
"Freak," Donovan muttered as they walked past her and John clinched his teeth but Sherlock didn't seem to notice. Lestrade didn't stop them from leaving. Sherlock didn't speak again until after they were in the taxi on the way home.
"It wasn't her fault."
"No, it wasn't," John agreed, staring hard at Sherlock. He knew something important had been revealed today; this had gone deeper than the horror at the accidental death of a child. He empathized with that girl. Sherlock didn't do empathy, not with strangers, not when he was in the middle of a case. John didn't quite dare to ask.
"This won't go in your blog," Sherlock said, after they had ridden in silence for a bit longer. It wasn't said as a question, but there was something of a question in the way Sherlock looked at him.
"No," John agreed, "I won't say anything about it."
That night, Sherlock played his violin until nearly five in the morning, alternating between melancholy and haunting melodies and what could only be called noise screeching tunelessly and torturous. By the time John got back from work the next day, Sherlock appeared his normal, bored, aggravating self. Except that he refused to speak in any fashion aside from Morse Code.
Two days later, John found a book on sign language sitting at his desk.