CHAPTER 19: WHEN THE SMILE FADES AWAY
The next day
"I can no longer bear this wait!" Sherlock shouts, springing to his feet from his armchair and pacing the empty flat. He stops in front of a wall in the living room, takes aim with his British Army Browning L9A1 and shoots twice at the yellow smiley face painted on the wallpaper.
A few seconds later, he hears frantic footsteps coming from the staircase, and Giulia bursts into the room, her hand wrapped around her phone already calling 999.
"Dear Lord, I've heard gunshots. What happened?" she yells, anguished.
"I was bored," Sherlock laconically replies, hinting at the smiley face.
She frowns at him in confusion, lowers her eyes on the gun that he is still holding, and gapes. Before she could even form a question, he lazily nods at the holes in the wall. She follows his gaze and immediately walks to the wall to inspect his unconventional 'redecoration'. She brushes her fingertips on the mangled wallpaper, dumbstruck.
"So, you chose the wall as your target?"
He shrugs, puts his index in the trigger hole of his weapon, and nonchalantly swings it around in the air.
"999, what's your emergency?" A voice echoes from the phone in Giulia's hand: she forgot to end the call.
She feels like she has just woken up from a dream and quickly apologises, "I'm sorry, everything's alright, apparently."
She hangs up but keeps the phone next to her ear and gives him a challenging look while ironically pronouncing what she wishes she had said, "By the way, I'd like to report a murder."
Sherlock rolls his eyes at her over-dramatic demeanour.
"Why do you even have a gun?" She asks, feeling the need to start somewhere—somewhere rational.
"Recreation. And protection, of course. I have enemies."
"I wonder why," she rebuts sarcastically. "Can I see it?" She stretches out her hand like a demanding kid.
"It isn't a toy."
"You've just called it recreational," she underlines.
"Good point. Here, you can have a look at it." He hands her the gun with the same carelessness as someone passing the salt.
She weighs it in her hands and grips it, roaming theatrically around the living room as if she were in a spy movie.
"My name is Bond, James Bond."
"Hey, 007, tone it down," Sherlock warns; she looks like she slipped into character a bit too enthusiastically.
She turns towards him, grasping the barrel with both hands and pointing it at his chest. He turns pale but tries to maintain a poker face.
"What are you doing? Put – it – down," he commands, slowly raising his hands in the air, and he couldn't really say if he is playing along with her act, or it's just the survival instinct kicking in.
She cocks a brow smugly. "Does it make you nervous?"
"Weapons never scared me," he replies unperturbed, but narrows his eyes, trying to read her. Does she really intend on shooting him point-blank?
"And what about death?"
"Nope," he pops the 'p' with a loud click of his lips, lowering his hands. He won't let her inside his head that easily.
"Wouldn't you be sad to leave this world behind?" She philosophically asks.
"Isn't it the good part of dying?" He jokes, studying her movements. Her muscles are relaxed, which would be highly unlikely for someone on the verge of killing another human being. Unless she was accustomed to it, his mind quickly adds, and that eerie thought makes shivers run down his spine. He forces his brain to remain lucid and analyse the situation. Her finger isn't even on the trigger, but she keeps it placed on the barrel, in a resting position. This shows that she is not about to shoot, not in the next seconds, at least. There is no tension in her shoulders; she is simply holding up the gun as she would do with any other object. There is literally nothing in her attitude that would classify her as a threat. Nothing except the loaded gun she keeps pointing at his chest.
"Has it ever occurred to you how easy it would be to kill someone?" She inquires in a light tone that seems to clash with the seriousness of the situation. For a moment, it looks like she forgot she is holding someone at gunpoint.
"Yes. That's exactly why I am so mad at the criminal classes these days. Why can't they just provide me with a simple murder?" He wanders off calmly, piling another layer of surrealism to those absurd circumstances.
At that moment, John enters the room, takes a quick look at the scene, and drops the shopping bags he is holding.
"What on Earth is happening here?" He cries out, alarmed.
Giulia flashes him a bright smile. "We were both bored, you know, the usual."
"If such a thing becomes usual, I swear I will instantly move. Now, let's stay calm and try to reason. You could start by lowering that, for instance," he commands in a stern voice, pointing a finger at the weapon in her hands.
She glowers at him. "I'm not a threat, Captain."
"Says the woman who's pointing a gun at our flatmate. Do you mind if I don't believe you?" He rebuts.
"I do, actually. I'm offended," she snaps back. She stares at them and lowers the firearm with a bitter chuckle. "Look at your faces. I can't believe it. You both think this is real. It's just a game." She looks down at the gun in her hands, and her faint smile fades as she puts the safety back on.
"Excuse me, are you using Sherlock's definition of a game? Because you ought to know that I don't approve of it," John states, flaring his nostrils. He has the feeling that he is being outnumbered by the lunatics in the flat.
"You can relax now. I was just enjoying myself." She hands the gun back to Sherlock, who cautiously takes it from her hands with an enigmatic look on his face.
"It was really a joke, then?" John asks dazed, massaging his forehead with two fingers in a failed attempt to flatten the furrow that has been sitting between his eyebrows.
"Well, you were the ones who made it serious." She shrugs as if it wasn't a big deal. In her mind, it never was.
Then she frowns at their reaction. "What's the matter with you? We've been living together for months now, and you still can't trust me?"
"Given our lifestyle and the psychopaths and murderers we've met—" John tries to justify his mistrust.
"I'm not one of them," she cuts him short. "At this point, I thought you knew me better than that." Her voice wavers, soaked with disappointment.
"I always feel like I don't know you at all, for the record," Holmes says scornfully.
"Here we go again." She sighs, recalling the night of her release and the barrage of questions he had poured on her on their way home. "And what would you like to know about me?"
He gives her an icy stare that she has never seen in his impenetrable eyes. "What are you still doing here?"
"Sherlock, drop it. I don't want to go through another argument," John grumbles.
"I'm not picking a fight, John. This is just a piece of friendly advice for our dear flatmate: leave," he hisses through gritted teeth. Giulia gapes, incapable of uttering a sound, frozen.
"What's wrong with you?" John gawks at him with shock painted all over his face.
"There's nothing wrong with me. She ruined everything. Look at the kitchen: she turned it upside down touching and throwing away my possessions," Sherlock complains.
"What the hell are you talking about? She did her best to tidy up your chaos, and she rightfully disposed of your drugs."
"I cannot accept it anymore." Sherlock shakes his head, enraged, and his curls bounce wildly on his forehead.
"You're making it all out of nowhere. What's her fault, now?"
"Nothing new. Her original sin was to move here. I wish—" Sherlock stops talking mid-sentence as if he suddenly regained a dose of self-control.
Nobody can hear the deafening sound of a thousand alarms blaring inside his mind palace. Somewhere deep in his conscience, he knows he is about to do something terrible, to say something dreadful that he could never unsay. Nobody knows it, but right now only a grain of common sense and humanity is holding him back. He still has enough self-control not to hurt her—no more than he already has, anyway.
What he doesn't expect, though, is for her to push him to take the step that he can't take back. Giulia looks directly into his eyes: all she wants is the brutal truth; at this point, nothing else matters.
She challenges him. "What is it? I've always encouraged you to speak freely in front of me. Do it. Say it out loud: what do you want?"
Sherlock takes a deep breath and pronounces his verdict.
"I wish you had never entered our lives. I wish I could go back to normal, back to our existence... before you."
His words float in the air for a few seconds. She nods slowly as the meaning sinks in.
"Thanks for your candour."
That's it: the proverbial last straw. She has been trying to resist Sherlock's attacks, enduring his mood swings and angry outbursts, but there's only so much she can take.
She keeps her head down and bites her lips, desperately trying not to cry in front of them; then she runs downstairs and slams the door of 221C.
John silently processes what just happened. The discussion turned horribly wrong in such a short time, and everything just fell apart. He inhales and exhales methodically before giving Sherlock an ironic smile.
"Well done."
"I did nothing. I was simply being honest."
"Since you're so honest, tell me: what did you do to my friend? Because I can't recognise the person in front of me. Who are you?" John asks, his voice trembling with rage.
"You know perfectly well who I am: a high functioning sociopath. This is just the sociopathic side of my character. I thought you got used to it by now," Sherlock snarls, flopping down on the couch.
John glares at him. "Yeah, I thought the same." He clenches his jaw and leaves him, descending the steps two steps at a time. Once he lands on the ground floor, he takes a deep breath and gently knocks on Giulia's door.
"I don't want to talk, John," she speaks from inside.
He flinches. "How did you know it was me?"
"Was there an actual possibility that it could be him?" She says sarcastically, but her voice cracks towards the end.
He doesn't talk back. She is right: Sherlock would never show up at her door after what he just said.
He tries again. "Can I come in?"
"Frankly, I'm too busy to stop you," is her frantic reply.
When John opens the door and steps in, he finds the room in complete chaos; clothes and books are scattered all around the small entrance. Giulia is whirling around the small place like a hurricane.
He walks to her, who is fiddling with the zip fastener of a suitcase. "Slow down. What are you doing?"
"I am packing, John. I'm leaving," she points out the obvious.
"No, don't." He takes her hands in his to stop her, a sudden sense of urgency in his tone.
She fixes her eyes on his; hers are veiled with tears.
"Didn't you hear him? I think he explained his desires very clearly." She slips her hands out of his grip and goes back to her luggage.
"He's just angry and discouraged. I'm sure he didn't mean the things he said," John clumsily tries to find a justification for Sherlock and a reason for her to stay.
"Of course he did. What is more, I think he's right," she says, emptying her closet. Her words resound firm; she is just acknowledging the brutal truth.
"You can't say that."
"After all, he has every right to want his old life back. And maybe you should too. Perhaps I made a mistake; I should have never come here a few months ago." She looks hurt and lost, but she's trying her best not to break down.
"Please, stay," he begs, as his voice drops.
"What for? He doesn't want me here anymore, and this is his home."
"I live here, too. Do I have a say in this? Why is my opinion always ignored?" John complains.
She steps forward and puts her hands on his shoulders, looking for his eyes.
"I'm not ignoring you. I simply think you should agree with him; you should ask for your previous life, too. Everything is going to work out in the end. Trust me, you'll be fine."
"And what about you?"
She smiles feebly at his concern for her, but doesn't reply. She lifts a hand to caress gently his unshaved cheek.
"Thank you for everything you've done for me, John. You've always been kind to me: you took me into your house, into your life. You allowed me to live stunning adventures with you."
"And put you in grave danger too," he recalls.
"It was part of the game, wasn't it? Now I'm not a player anymore: my time is over. I will never get to thank you to the fullest, so I think I'll just stop here," she murmurs, taking a step backwards.
He stands still, arms down at his side, fists clenched, upset.
"You're very welcome for everything," he pushes out the words.
She is turning away, but she stops as if she was reminded of something.
"I- I'd thank him, too, you know, but I'm not sure he would listen to me right now. So, could you—" She hesitates but forces herself to complete her sentence. "Tell him I've met many men in my life, and he's surely one of the most flawed. But in the end, he turned out to be one of the most extraordinary, as well. And I am truly sorry for all the trouble I caused him, with my arrest and everything."
The shadow of a smile flashes on her face as she mentally adds, I'm not sorry for getting rid of his drugs, to be honest.
She raises her gaze on John: he is shifting his weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortable. She shakes her head as if to erase all her words or simply rewind.
"Actually, I think I was rambling. Just tell him that he is finally having his life back. It's what he wanted."
"Giulia," John begins, but she cuts him off.
"Please, now go."
He has no choice but to turn around and walk away. He climbs the stairs and enters the living room only to find Sherlock lost in his mind palace. He sighs and sinks into his chair. No one speaks for several minutes, then they hear some commotion downstairs. Sherlock grumbles, but doesn't come back to reality. John stares at him while mustering all his self-control not to punch him. They go on like this for half an hour: John plotting Sherlock's murder and Sherlock guessing what original insults John might come up with.
After a while, Sherlock contemplates the blissful calmness in the flat and breathes out, "She is finally done raising hell down there. I'm glad the noise stopped."
Watson groans, "You won't have to worry about the noise anymore. She's moving out."
Holmes ponders that statement for a while, then says flatly, "Good."
"That's all you have to say?" John blurts out. "Jesus, Sherlock, you've just kicked out a woman sending her out in the street homeless and alone."
Sherlock gazes upon vacancy and talks like a robot, "She should have never come to this place. She'd better keep her distance."
"How can you go on like this? She is our friend."
Sherlock's head jerks up at those words. "This was our first mistake. Calling her like that, considering her like that," he spits out, wrinkling his nose in a grimace of disapproval.
"And what's wrong with friends?" John asks but immediately raises a hand in the air to prevent his predictable comeback. "No, don't bother answering. I wonder why I keep asking you these questions."
Holmes lets out a deep sigh as if he was trying to get rid of a burden constricting his chest, his conscience maybe.
"Being friends with someone is normal—or at least you all make it look like that. But being friends with us... That is masochistic. We are dangerous, John. Can't you see it? We are, in fact, dangerous people who tend to run into very dangerous situations more often than expected, than humanly plausible. This is what we are, this is our lifestyle, and we are used to it. But she shouldn't be involved in this; it wouldn't be fair. Because we chose it in the first place, and she didn't."
"You're wrong. She did choose this lifestyle, this mess, even the danger. Everything she did was based on her own choice. Nobody has ever forced her to be around us, Sherlock. We are dangerous, and she knew it. Yet she stayed. Until you showed her the door," John retorts, lowering his eyes.
"Oh, forgive me if I wanted her out of the most perilous place in London," Sherlock snaps back.
Watson turns towards him, confused. "What are you talking about?"
"I will not deny that I am the most selfish, obnoxious man in this city, but I didn't get rid of her on a whim."
John does a double-take and frowns, clueless. "I don't understand."
"I phoned a killer a few days ago," Holmes reminds him as if that was enough of an explanation.
"I know."
"But you don't know that he threatened me during our call. And not just me: he said he would become a concrete presence in my life," Sherlock quotes the obscure words of that voice.
"What does it mean?" John scratches his head, baffled.
"Haven't the faintest. But it was quite obvious that everyone around me was in danger—"
"Including Giulia," John completes his sentence, finally getting his intentions.
"Yup. That's why I've been so hateful and mean to her lately. I was just trying to get her to walk away from me. I simply wanted to—"
"Save her," John concludes his sentence again as his brain works frantically.
"Yes. Would you please let me finish?" He groans.
"Shut up, Sherlock. Shut up and listen." John places a finger on his lips, signalling him to keep quiet.
The detective pricks up his ears for a couple of seconds, then shakes his head.
"To what? I can't hear anything."
"Exactly." John is struck by a sudden realisation, and all colour drains from his face.
"Oh, God." He whips around and sprints out of the room.
Sherlock follows him downstairs. "Wait, John. Where are you going?"
"All that noise and commotion we previously heard was coming from Giulia's room," he specifies, dashing along the staircase.
They reach the door of 221C: there are clear signs of a break-in around the lock and the damaged handle. They freeze and slowly push the door open, peeking inside.
Most of her clothes and books are now packed inside suitcases and bags. There's no sign of all the chaos John saw, but also no sign of Giulia.
Holmes inspects some dirty footprints on the floor and kneels down next to a white tissue abandoned in a corner. He grabs it and carefully moves it close to his nose. He immediately wrinkles his nostrils and throws the handkerchief away.
"Chloroform," he states.
John gives him a desperate look.
"She has been kidnapped. You didn't save her, after all."