A/N: Hey what up. I told y'all I was working on this and here we are.
So after a lot of plot rejiggering I decided the only way I'm going to remain invested enough to finish writing this is if I use it as an excuse to tell the comically intricate backstory I came up with for Violet and Siger, especially Violet's family and the dude she had an affair with (Sherlock's biological father). Back when I first wrote Can't Rewind I got waaay too caught up in crafting histories for the Holmes parents (there's an entire family tree for Violet with birth dates and everything going back three generations, lord help me) and then promptly never did anything with any of it.
As luck would have it Mrs Hudson happens to be just the right age to slot in with Violet's story extremely easily. So I've decided we're taking this ship and pivoting from murder mystery to, uh... history mystery? With spies? I no longer especially care about canon compliance (mainly because I don't want to re-watch the show), though I'll still do my best to avoid going too far off the rails where possible.
I also hope everyone is cool with Josh sticking around. Our goofy ginger pal now has a whole complicated backstory of his very own and I enjoy writing his dialogue.
FOR NEW AND/OR FUTURE READERS: A span of roughly 8 years elapsed between the posting of the last chapter and this one. For whatever context that may provide.
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"Hey!"
A man's voice down the end of the hall. Sherlock stumbled a bit in a decidedly undignified scramble for the screen door, which had snapped shut as Joshua had apparently chosen to run instead of wait for him.
Just as he'd grasped the door handle, however, he was stopped short by the sound of a woman's startled shriek.
"Turn around right now, or she's dead."
"Frank! Oh for god's-!"
"Quiet, Martha."
Frozen mid-way through opening the door, Sherlock reluctantly turned his head. Behind him was Harold (Frank…?) holding his wife by the upper arm, handgun pointed directly at her temple. Sherlock glared in a mixture of surprise and angry disbelief.
"Oh fuck off," he snapped after a brief pause. "You're not going to shoot her."
Harold smirked, and Sherlock was struck with the distinct impression that he'd just made a grave error in judgement.
"Never," the man said with a smile, wincing a bit for the way the action caused a large, dark bruise on his face to shift. He released Mrs Hudson, who looked a tad offended but no worse for wear, and in the same motion shifted his firearm to aim down the hall instead. "But I'd sure as hell shoot you, kid."
Ah... and that would be the error made, then. Sherlock had stopped exactly where he'd needed to be to line up a straight shot for his ribcage. He stared fixedly at the gun barrel for a beat or two, trying to decide if he really thought the man would risk killing him. Hadn't done so yet. Had taken rather distinct pains to prevent it, in fact. Bandaged him up and treated him for infection. Wouldn't make sense to undo all that work just to stop Sherlock escaping.
"You're bluffing," he asserted confidently. Took a step backwards towards the night air outside.
Sure enough, Harold grit his teeth and lowered the gun. His free hand crept towards his midsection as if cradling an injury there, and all at once Sherlock's brain caught up with him. He was left trying frantically to remember if Harold had been injured earlier. Didn't think so. Bruises looked a day or so old, too - wait, how long had Sherlock been unconscious? Christ, he had no idea. Hopefully not days.
"Fine, you clever little shit," the man snapped, breaking into Sherlock's thoughts. "Don't forget we still have your ID, though. And I know exactly who you're related to."
A thrum of alarm shot through him at the thought of Mycroft having been alerted to his location. He froze in the doorway and tried not to look too panicked.
"Oh, and who might that be?" Sherlock's attempt to deliver this question with an unimpressed, imperious stare felt patently ridiculous, given the circumstances, but old habits died hard.
Harold smirked. "Violet Cauchois."
Sherlock's brain stuttered to a halt. His haughty stare dropped immediately into a perplexed blink - first because Harold had actually pronounced his mother's maiden name correctly, which was strange enough to hear in his American accent, and second because... what? His mum? What in hell did his mum have to do with anything?
"What in hell has my mum got to do with anything?" he asked blankly, because his brain-to-speech filter had shut itself down some dozen crises ago.
Harold seemed to have been expecting a very different reaction. His carefully menacing expression dropped into confusion in much the same way Sherlock's had.
"What do you mean what's she-" he snapped, tone an odd mixture of baffled and angry. "The Kestrel? Heroin?"
Sherlock could offer nothing beyond an utterly bewildered stare.
A series of loud bangs sounded from somewhere further into the house, mercifully cutting short their strange little standoff. Both Harold and Mrs Hudson startled badly and turned towards the noise. Sherlock startled as well, and with a sensation like crackling ice the sudden burst of adrenaline snapped his brain into temporary focus. He remembered he'd been in the midst of escaping the house and finally bolted out the door after Joshua.
Outside the dark night air was disgustingly warm. Nowhere near the sweltering sauna of daylight hours, but still distinctly unpleasant. Sherlock sprinted for a line of foliage behind the house, thinking it best to get under some sort of cover should Harold decide to come after him with the gun. He didn't get more than a few metres away from the building however before Josh appeared from around the back of a shed nearby and waved frantically to get his attention. Sherlock changed course and managed to skid around the shed corner just as the back door slammed open once more. Sounds of Harold telling his wife not to bother doing something or other disappeared back into the house as the man apparently gave up the chase before even starting.
Sherlock allowed his back to collide with the rough wood of the shed and slid down to sit on the damp grass below, trying to negotiate a war between his body's need for oxygen and his diaphragm's objections to moving. Breathing with only his chest muscles made every inhalation feel awkward and uncomfortable; legacy of a childhood full of bruised and cracked ribs, he guessed. What a bizarrely specific weakness.
Josh leant over him to peer around the shed, checking the coast was clear. Apparently satisfied, he looked back down to Sherlock with an angry glare.
"What the fuck, dude?"
"Sorry," Sherlock muttered, grimacing. In lieu of trying to explain himself (what was there to explain, anyway, beyond his being a distractible moron) he simply let his head drop and focused on pulmonary concerns. In, out, in, out.
"Yeah, well you're lucky I still had those firecrackers."
A beat passed, silent but for Sherlock's careful breathing and the nighttime ambiance of an unfamiliar ecosystem.
Finally Josh spoke again. "Okay, get up. We can't hide behind the shed all night."
"I like the shed, we should stay behind the shed," Sherlock mumbled into his knees. He'd exhausted the sliver of strength gained by his morphine-induced nap and moving now seemed like a terrible plan.
Sadly Josh did not seem to share this sentiment. He grabbed Sherlock's arm and was able to heft him up without much trouble, and practically dragged him towards a line of trees and dense vegetation bordering the garden. Venturing into some muggy Florida jungle in the middle of the night with a strange man who'd popped out of his captors' ceiling felt like one of the stupider things Sherlock had done in his life, but there were hardly any better options. Reluctantly he deigned to follow along even after Josh dropped the hold on his upper arm. The man pulled out a small torch and held it low to illuminate a small dirt path cutting through thick foliage, partially hidden by leaves and vines and ubiquitous swarms of flying insects. Seemed unconcerned by the prospect of dangerous wildlife, so Sherlock tried to follow his lead and not to jump at every unidentifiable sound. Couldn't fully suppress a sense of deep unease over what might lurk around them - he'd no idea where alligators lived, probably needed water or something? But then weren't there also giant snakes and… what, panthers? Vaguely remembered reading something about Florida having panthers.
Finally, after what felt like a small eternity, they reached what seemed to be their destination, though there was nothing immediately visible to explain why Josh had pulled up short next to some stout, vaguely tree-like plant with gigantic leaves. Sherlock had so far seen no panthers or any other fauna for that matter beyond various small lizards and the ubiquitous biting insects, but remained vigilant just in case that was why they were stopping. Wasn't sure how to fight a large predatory animal.
Josh pushed one of the enormous leaves aside, revealing some manner of man-made cave behind, and ducked inside. Sherlock obediently followed, even though some illogical corner of his brain worried Josh was perhaps leading them into a snake den. Thankfully there were no snakes. Instead Sherlock realised it was the back compartment of an ancient, rusted-out van, consumed by vegetation so as to be fully concealed from above, which had been converted into a makeshift shelter. A faded beach umbrella stripped of its frame was spread out on the floor like carpeting, fine mesh netting hung in gaps where doors and windows had once been, keeping out the bugs, several plastic bags piled into a corner seemed to contain things like a sleeping bag and cookware, and a string of fairy lights had been affixed to the ceiling.
As they made their way inside Josh flipped the switch on a large battery which powered the fairy lights, bathing the space in a weak ethereal glow. A small fan mounted near the front windows also kicked on to provide airflow, which was an unexpected relief.
"Welcome to Fort Hudson, I guess," Josh said blandly. "Used to hang out here a lot. Makes for a pretty good bolt hole when the house isn't safe."
Five months ago Sherlock might have been inclined to make a derisive comment, scoff and judge Josh's 'fort' a pitiful hovel. He'd come a long way since then, though, most of it spent sleeping in parks and alleys and bus shelters (and in a tiny bedroom in a dilapidated townhouse that smelt of smoke and weed and the uncertain spark of something too fragile to risk calling love and oh god why was he thinking about him again stop it stop it stop) and as such found himself with no major complaints. Intact roof and a rug? Pinnacle of comfort.
Sherlock's overwrought brain was still struggling to centre itself, it seemed. Thrown into absolute internal chaos by lingering morphine and a lack of nicotine and god knew what else. Every visual cue seemed to trigger endless fractal tangents of associated information, most of it in the form of memories he didn't want to dwell on, and Josh's freckled cheeks in the weak light felt like pouring salt on a raw wound. So, in an effort to avoid looking anywhere near the man's face, Sherlock collapsed against the furthest wall in a slouching heap and closed his eyes. He must have seemed as if he were meaning to fall asleep, because Josh made a disgruntled noise and gave him a rough shake by the shoulder. Sherlock grimaced as the movement sent a spike of pain through his abdomen and reluctantly opened his eyes to fix a dark glower at him.
"What?" he snapped, voice coming out slightly strangled. Not so much for the pain (which had improved considerably between the bandaging and whatever drugs he'd been dosed with) but for the sudden mental cascade of a thousand fragmented images of a different freckled face with a different stupid accent.
"Oh, shit, sorry. I forgot you're all messed up. But hey this ain't nap time though, okay? We're just laying low until the heat's off a bit."
Sherlock closed his eyes again and briefly dug the heels of his palms into them in an effort to stop the torrent of memories. Didn't help, just made his face hurt. Shifted his hands to tangle in his hair instead, then miserably curled up into a ball.
"I'm not sleeping," he growled into the little cocoon he'd made for himself.
"Right, sure. You just happen to look exactly like a guy getting ready to take a nap." Josh shoved him again, a bit more roughly this time, and at the unwanted contact Sherlock abruptly lifted his head and snarled at the man. Not in the mood to be manhandled by some fucking idiot in a bloody van in a bloody jungle. He threw the full force of his Siger impression into projecting as threatening an aura as he could possibly manage. Get the freckled bastard to back the fuck off.
Josh did no such thing. In fact, he failed to react at all beyond a bland, unimpressed stare.
An awkward silence stretched between them.
"My guy if you wanna fight me that's your prerogative, I guess, but I gotta warn you I would fuck you up," Josh finally informed him. By his tone this clearly wasn't meant as a threat, just a flat statement of fact.
Sherlock let the chill bleed out of his expression and blinked quizzically at the man. Didn't think he'd ever tried that trick and had it fail before. Usually people at least faltered.
"Real mean mug, though, I'll give you that," Josh added with an offhand shrug.
Moving away, he shifted one of the plastic bags out from the pile in the corner and flopped down on it like a beanbag chair. The two of them regarded each other curiously - Sherlock in an effort to figure out what the hell made this random American so unmoved by his best imitation of a violent psychopath, and Josh for his own inscrutable reasons. At the very least, Sherlock mused to himself blandly, the man's unruffled reaction in the face of impending violence had thoroughly dashed any associations between him and Eric. Small mercies.
After a few moments' scrutiny Josh finally huffed a tired sigh to himself and let his head loll back into the bags behind him.
"Alright, look," he grumbled towards the ceiling in a voice drained of the casual levity Sherlock had begun to expect of him. "I don't know what's going on with you, like, at all. And honestly I wouldn't even give a shit except for Frank seems to think you're important, and I want to know why before I decide what to do." He lifted his head again and fixed Sherlock with a hard stare. "So, here's the deal - tell me who the fuck you're actually working with, and what you're trying to accomplish. And then if your goals don't run completely counter to mine I promise I'll do my best to help you out."
There was a lot to unpack in that statement, layers upon layers in the meta context. Under normal circumstances this might have triggered an avalanche of intrigued speculation. At the moment, however, Sherlock's brain was an absolute shambles. Between failing to fully process the words and deleting what little he did catch he somehow only managed to retain a single irrelevant detail.
"... who's Frank?" he asked blankly.
Josh's stare morphed into a look somewhere between baffled and intensely frustrated. "Who's Frank? The guy who almost just fucking shot you!"
Sherlock matched Josh's frustrated glare with one of his own. "You mean Harold?"
"What? No, dude. Frank. Harold left. Pretty sure I told you that like less than an hour ago."
A pregnant pause passed during which Sherlock felt very lost, abruptly caught on as his waterlogged brain finally got round to connecting the dots, then found himself feeling even more lost because the only possible answer was ridiculous.
"Your uncle has a twin brother," he concluded, for some reason finding himself offended by the very notion.
"Both my uncles have a twin brother, yes," Josh confirmed sardonically. "They also have completely different facial hair right now and one is beat to hell, so I gotta admit I'm not totally sure how you thought they were the same person."
"Oh fuck off," Sherlock snapped, not at all in the mood to be criticised over something so unfathomably stupid. "I'll not be belittled over failing to notice if a man pointing a gun at me had a beard or not."
Josh held his hands up placatingly.
"Okay, okay, fine. Doesn't matter anyway. You good with that deal, then?"
Sherlock huffed a sigh and went back to leaning against the van wall with his eyes closed. "What deal?"
"The deal I just - holy shit, dude, how do you keep forgetting stuff that just happened?" Josh's voice was an outraged mix of aggravated and concerned. "Did you get hit in the head or something?"
Sherlock growled to himself and curled into his slouching ball a bit further. Wasn't concussed. He knew exactly what was happening and why. Didn't really fancy having to explain the problem to some lunatic he'd just met an hour ago, though. Then again Josh would no doubt keep pestering him about it until he clarified things at least a bit, so… ugh, fuck's sake.
"I'm fine. Just haven't had any stimulants in a while," he grumbled unhappily. Josh gave him a baffled look, and Sherlock reluctantly moved to clarify before he got himself chalked up as insane rather than brain damaged. "Forgetting things and being a distractible moron is… it's not… abnormal, for me. Stimulants help for some reason, I've been relying on cigarettes to manage it. But one of your uncles nearly killed me with a morphine overdose on the way here and I suppose my last bit of nicotine must've worn off while I was unconscious. So I'll be stuck as a scatterbrained idiot until I find a chance to have a smoke."
Josh grimaced a bit and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Ah… shit, okay. Sorry. You can light up in here if you want, I don't care." His expression shifted as if remembering something. "Oh, hey, wait, did Penny leave her-? Hang on, probably in one of these…"
He turned and dug around in a few nearby bags, quickly pulling out a small, thin container. Shook it a bit to hear the contents rattle and grinned as he flicked it Sherlock's way.
"Knew she left a box of these damn things in here!"
Sherlock picked up the packet from where it'd bounced off his side and tilted it towards the weak light to read the label - generic nicotine patches.
"Girlfriend's been trying to quit smoking for a while now. Forgets to put the patches back in her purse, like, every single time." Josh paused a moment, looking somewhat pained, then muttered, "... well, ex-girlfriend, I guess."
Despite himself, Sherlock huffed a sympathetic breath through his nose as he set about figuring out how the stupid patches worked. Hadn't ever used one before.
"I did that for a while, too," he replied distractedly.
"Did what?" Josh looked up from where he'd glanced away, frowning. Sherlock finally managed to figure out how to get the package open and squinted at the instructions in the dim light for a second before deciding it wasn't worth the effort trying to read them. Forearm placement was probably fine. Maybe try to cover a few of the more obvious track marks.
"Kept forgetting the ex part."
"Yeah? Did yours also break up with you for no goddamn reason and run off to California?" Josh asked bitterly.
"Uh… no. Actually come to think of it I guess we never formally broke up," Sherlock mumbled as he retrieved the battered cigarette pack from his pocket - patches were all well and good as a means to maintain a steadier dose going forward, but he had no intention of sitting around waiting for the slow percolation of nicotine through skin to build up to a functional level.
His stupid mouth of course took advantage of the distraction of fishing out his lighter to carry on talking without conscious approval.
"Father had him arrested as part of some scheme to manipulate my brother into offing me," he explained, words tumbling out in an unbroken stream of consciousness as they usually did in this state. "... I was able to get him cleared of all charges and released from jail without too much trouble but I didn't think he'd want to see me again after I'd shouted in his face like that and anyway I did need to get out of the country before Mycroft had a chance to work out my misdirection chain on the forged travel papers or traced the last trust fund withdrawal so I just left but it seemed like the breakup was implied I think or at least it must be by now since it's been a few months."
Josh blinked, drew his head back with a baffled little shake.
"Uh, wow, okay. You, uh… gonna help me unpack any of that or am I on my own?"
Sherlock scowled. Determined he'd be far better served keeping his mouth firmly clamped around his cigarette so as to absorb as much nicotine as possible. Stupid fucking brain with its stupid fucking broken impulse control.
"On my own, I guess. Cool." Josh drew a long, centreing breath through his nose, then turned and dug a small notepad and pen out of the same bag he'd found the nicotine patches in. He spent several seconds scribbling, frowned at the page in an oddly scrutinising way, then held the pad up to read back aloud what he'd written.
"Okay. Your dad got your boyfriend arrested to try to get your brother to kill you. Then you somehow got your guy cleared and fled the country after acquiring forged documents even though you're like barely an adult, with a trust fund in there somewhere? And you're super casual about all that. So you're either schizophrenic as hell, or you're from a background where that kind of stuff is normal. Frank wouldn't go to all this trouble over some crazy homeless kid, so I'm gonna guess your family's involved in something like deep state politics or organised crime?"
Sherlock was only barely listening. Enough nicotine had worked its way into his system to let him conjure up his silly little mind-field and start trying to take stock of the state of his brain after this latest round of physical insult, and that seemed a far higher priority than keeping track of whatever Josh was on about. Memories and information lay scattered haphazardly across great swaths of his internal space, aftermath of the hurricane his mind became in the absence of chemical restraints. Ugh, what an absolute bloody mess. He'd have to pick through the debris piece by piece just to start trying to make sense of anything he'd done or learnt in the past few hours.
"Er... both, I think," he heard himself say. In response to what, he wasn't entirely sure. Something about criminals? His family? Oh! Wait, hadn't not-Harold said something important related to that?
"Ah!" Sherlock exclaimed. "My mum!"
Josh rubbed at his forehead as if fighting a headache. "Sure, dude, your mom. Who needs context anyway."
Sherlock waved him off impatiently, scrubbing hands through his hair as he tried to think. Brain was still a disaster zone of loose scraps of data and misfiled memories, getting it all back in order by means of his little mental abstractions would take forever. Needed a more efficient way to organise, slow thoughts down enough to sort through them.
He eyed Josh dubiously through his fringe. While the man's freckled face no longer triggered a painful torrent of glass-sharp memories, it did remind him of the way Eric had always been happy enough to play audience to Sherlock's cocaine-fuelled rambling. How helpful it had been just having someone willing to listen whilst he worked through all the information in his head. And how Eric seemed to instinctively know when to reign him in before he got too worked up or off-topic. Josh wouldn't have the same stabilising effect (no one would, never going to have that kind of comfort again, stop thinking about him stop it stop it stop) but it might be better than nothing.
"If I were to dump an absolute deluge of tangentially-related information on you right now, probably in a manic ramble, would you be able to… I don't know, listen, or write some of it down, or something? Help organise things?"
Josh, to his credit, didn't look especially fazed. With an air of a man resigned to his fate he balanced his notepad on one knee, pen at the ready, and lifted one shoulder in a silent get on with it, then.
Well, that would have to do. No proper way to collect anything otherwise. He took a deep breath.
"Har— Frank lifted my ID back in Tallahassee and threatened to 'find out who's looking for me' - but any public records search should've pointed him directly towards my brother, or, if his sources were badly out of date, our late father. Both prominent names in British military intelligence, both with a vested interest in knowing where I am at all times. Instead he cited my mother, by her maiden name no less, which doesn't make any sense because if you've dug far enough to find that name you've surely already come across Siger Holmes multiple times. Who skips over him to focus on a retired French spy? Not to mention he also said something about kestrels and heroin and that makes even less sense - I mean, not that I'd put Mummy past having been addicted to heroin, I guess, that might make a lot of sense honestly, but the other thing was presumably one of her codenames and why would some American bloke know anything about that? Unless he was CIA or something? Specialised in infiltrating the Soviets like my parents did, maybe knew her from before she married? But even if that were the case what the hell would any of that have to do with me? Surely anyone who knew Mummy personally wouldn't think her likely to give in to blackmail. She'd just tell them it was my own fault for getting caught like a bloody idiot and to dispose of the rubbish or something, assuming she were lucid enough to even remember I exist."
Several seconds stretched between them punctuated by nothing but Josh's scribbling. Finally the man dotted a final line with a bit of a flourish, then flipped his notepad up to regard it with an odd sort of pride.
"You know, Aunty was right, shorthand really is an undervalued skill."
Sherlock had no idea how to respond to that, and therefore didn't. Took a last drag off his dwindling cigarette instead and reluctantly stubbed it out on the metal wall of the van interior. Really would've liked to smoke another, but god knew when he'd be able to get more, and he couldn't be sure if the patches were going to be strong enough to rely on.
"Alright, so let's see what we got here… well, you pegged Frank right away, that's pretty impressive. Former CIA agent, yeah. Got up to a bunch of shady shit in Russia during the Cold War. So I guess he must have known your mom, then? Cause he sure as hell hasn't looked anything up. His computer's busted into a million pieces right now and he's too paranoid to borrow one for that kind of stuff."
"The timeline doesn't make sense, though," Sherlock cut in. "She retired just after my brother was born, would've been out of that sphere for nearly a decade by the time I came along. How would he have recognised my connection to her off just a name? Holmes isn't exactly uncommon. And on top of that why refer to her by her maiden name, if he knew she'd married?"
Sherlock frowned into the murky blackness around them and tried to reconcile the idea of his mother having had an entire life outside the limited scope of his concept of her. She'd been an actual person, at one point. Not just a hollowed-out shell playing housewife.
Josh raised a brow at him bemusedly. "Uh, probably to see how you'd react? Pretty basic intelligence-gathering tactic, dude."
Sherlock groaned with the realisation that Josh was right, he'd fallen for an obvious trap without noticing. As usual. Shouldn't have stung so badly; he'd been used to this at one point. Spent the majority of his existence in a constant state of dread just waiting to discover how badly he'd fucked up this time. But it had been so much easier to accept that reality when it was all he'd ever known. Cocaine had given him a taste of life out from under that sword of damocles, made the wound seem deeper when it fell.
With a tired huff of a sigh he let his head drop onto one knee and closed his eyes.
"Should've never gone off coke," he heard himself mutter.
"Not super sure how that's relevant, but okay," Josh replied. A buzzing noise from his pocket made them both jump, and Sherlock looked up to see Josh pull a flip-top mobile out of his pocket. He frowned at the screen.
"Welp, Frank knows we're out here. Guess that was kind of inevitable."
Sherlock tensed in vague alarm. "Do we… need to go, then?" Didn't fancy venturing back out into the bug-infested woods, but mosquitoes were probably less dangerous than bullets.
"Nah." Josh shook his head. Seemingly on a whim he turned the phone so Sherlock could see the message.
Go ahead and keep him until morning, I'll clean up your mess in the meantime.
"Any suggestions for pithy one-liners to send back?" Josh asked blandly. He turned the phone back to himself and clicked a few keys, presumably meaning to reply.
"No," Sherlock grumbled and went back to leaning his head on his knee. Then, suddenly, "Wait, yes. Tell him 'Siger sends his regards' or something, turn his stupid trick back on him. If he knows the name it provides a bit more context."
"Sure, whatever. Let's get fucking esoteric," Josh quipped as he typed. He flipped the screen towards Sherlock once more to confirm the spelling, then send it. "You know you never answered the question I actually cared about. Or told me your name."
"Sherlock Holmes," he replied flatly. Despite the nicotine he was beginning to feel profoundly exhausted. "Forgot the other question."
"Who you're working for, and what your goals are. Which is two questions, I guess, but whatever."
"I think at this point we've established I'm far too incompetent to plausibly be working for anyone." Sherlock hoped the cynical tone was enough to cover how genuinely frustrated he was by his latest string of unforced blunders. "And goals… I don't know. None, I guess."
"None?" Josh repeated dubiously. "You just randomly travelled to Tallahassee, of all places? From England? For absolutely no reason?"
"Yep," Sherlock replied in a falsely upbeat quip.
"You know I don't believe that for a fucking second, right?"
Sherlock sighed. Lifted his head off his knee to instead lean back against the wall of the van with his legs stretched out. Christ, fuck being cagey. He just wanted this stupid conversation over with.
"I was in New York for a while but it felt too much like London, was hoping a drastically different environment might stop triggering so many memories," he admitted. Shifted his eyes to look at Josh's face, watched with resignation as his mind once again rearranged the man's freckles into more familiar constellations, triggered another cascade of imagery and association. Eric's lopsided smile, foreign sensation of safety in vulnerability, the heady musk of his skin after sex. Wondered dully if this sharp stab of regret would diminish over time or if he'd spend the rest of his life pining over a month-long fling with a cockney pothead. "... hasn't really worked."
"Well, I guess that makes some kinda sense," Josh conceded. "Shit luck for you then randomly running into a guy down here who knows your parents."
A spark of memory wormed its way free of the other images crowding his skull. Sherlock's brows furrowed as he thought back to Mrs Hudson happening upon him back in Tallahassee, how she'd not so much as entertained the idea of taking him to hospital. Why had she approached him in the first place? Had that really just been kindness? Or had she thought his face familiar? And hadn't she only switched tacks to bringing him back to her home after catching his accent?
To peg him as related to an old acquaintance from a distance, though… something still seemed off. Sherlock wasn't especially good with faces but even he could say with some certainty that he didn't look enough like his mum for that.
What he couldn't say for certain, though, was how much he might look like his father. His actual father, not Siger. The man Mummy had an affair with whilst Siger was away on extended business. And the more he was forced to confront the idea of Violet as a living person rather than just the vague concept of his mother, the more he had to wonder if that man had really been a simple horse groom after all.
"I think… your aunt might have been the one who knew them, actually," Sherlock concluded, voice gone a bit distracted as disparate pieces came together. "She offered assistance after spotting me injured on the pavement… had a bag with her but there weren't any shops nearby. Must've driven past and spotted something about me worth investigating, pulled over round the corner to avoid drawing attention. And she only seemed to decide to bring me to Harold after she'd caught my accent."
Despite the incredibly vague deduction Josh seemed to catch on quickly. "You think she mistook you for someone she knew back in England?"
"A spooky ghost, maybe," Sherlock replied sarcastically. Then huffed a breath and let his head rest on the wall again.
Another buzzing noise broke the silence, and Josh drew his phone out once more.
"'Alphonse sends his back'?" he read quizzically. "Who the fuck is Alphonse?"
Sherlock quirked a bemused smile. Well, then. What a bizarre way to learn about one's family.
"My grandfather."
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