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Sherlock slowly emerges from the depths of his unconsciousness.
At first, blurred – then more and more vivid – scraps of memories start to flash behind his closed eyelids, his mind getting back to work way faster than his body. But his senses quickly catch up, and the pain he suddenly feels is overwhelming – the pain of this heavy, mortal envelope designed to carry his fragile brain, the pain of this too sensitive body reactivating like an old, rusted mechanism, as life flows through him from his heart to his limbs, the pain inflicted by the rough plastic tubes sunk into his nose and down his dry throat.
He takes a sudden, deep breath, that becomes a cough as cold air sets fire to his damaged lungs, and he can feel the taste of his own blood on his tongue and lips. He can vaguely hear an animated rumble – people and things are moving and rushing towards him, and finally the long, irritating tubes are slowly – too slowly – removed from his bloodied throat.
Still coughing, he attempts to move his hands, his toes, his head, anything, but the pain has become so overwhelming that he cannot even say if his limbs actually respond. People, beyond his personal, painful sphere, keep producing more and more sounds – speaking to him perhaps – but he cannot focus on anything else than the fire running all over his body. The flashes in his mind, though, increase as quickly as the pain in their speed and precision, and it soon grows more significant than the physical suffering, than his uncontrolled limbs, than his blood in his mouth, than the mixed smells of antiseptic and sweat all around him.
He can remember, he can see her again, her serious and annoyed face, her arm stretched out in front of her and her fingers tight around the gun. And the bullet, the feel of the bullet piercing his skin and muscles and ribs and lungs. And the panic, oh, the cold panic that he had felt as he realized that she – his friend – was the one that had sent this bullet inside his body.
That same panic engulfs him at the memories, and he is too weak, too damaged to get his control back.
He needs help. He randomly reaches up with his right arm, in a desperate attempt to catch anyone’s attention, but miraculously another hand grasps his and gently squeezes it.
“You’re fine, Sherlock”, says a reassuring voice. “You’re in St-Bart’s. They’re taking care of you. You’ll be safe.”
Sherlock freezes. A heartbeat. Then he processes.
John. That’s John! John will help. He will. He…
He snaps his eyes open, immediately finding John’s and focusing on them despite the aggressive white light of the room. He open his mouth as well, but it is so dry – he cannot formulate any clear sentence. He is too dizzy to do so anyway. But John has stopped speaking, listening carefully to him, so Sherlock strokes his cracked lips with his furred tongue, and he croaks:
“Mary…”
Then the familiar, welcome effect of morphine hits him, rapidly soothing his body; his gaze blurs, his eyelids shut, and he falls asleep before he gets any answer.
He feels better the second time he wakes up. Not in his peak condition, but better. His breathing is easier and steadier, the pain less darting, his mind more relaxed. And the room smells better too.
Of course, he thinks about Mary almost immediately, but he stays calm as his eyelids rise slowly and he looks around him, blinking in the dimness that seems too bright to him after so much sleep.
He is in a hospital room, of course, and he is alone. Good. He hates it when people can see him at his disadvantage – which he indubitably is now. The whole medical machinery stands on his left; on his right, all over the chest of drawers that is placed against the wall, are flowers.
At the sight of the plentiful, multicolored corollas, Sherlock realizes how astonishing it is that he somehow managed to get so many people’s care and attentions. A few years ago, he would not have received any of this. He did not receive any of this. But here there are, the splendidly blossoming petals, dazzling against the hospital room’s sober white wall. Seeing this is oddly, profoundly heart-warming.
He spends the next few minutes trying to guess which one of his friends brought each bouquet, and it vaguely amuses him; but he quickly gets bored, as he always does, and the most difficult thoughts start invading him again. Yet he does not want to let them monopolize his mind now. He will have to think about all this, of course he will. He will have to find solutions. But not yet.
As he turns his head to continue his exploration of the space, his gaze falls on another flower, straight across the room, in front of the unique window. His heart misses a beat.
It is a single, red rose, slender and graceful in its plain vase. A young flower, not completely opened up yet, but healthy and pure. Next to it, leaning against the vase, is a small, white card, with a red W printed on it.
Sherlock has not really thought about Irene Adler for a while. He has been rather preoccupied with Charles Augustus Magnussen lately; besides, it was already hard enough to maintain a semblance of relationship with Janine without comparing it to whatever he had experienced with the Woman, so he had just prevented her slipping into his mind palace for an indeterminate period of time.
But now, the simple sight of the rose forcefully reminds him fragments of their history together, because history there has been – and, apparently, history there still is. The flower itself reminds him of the Woman, slim, velvet, intense and red. As he gets more and more lost in his memories, he is struck by the unsettling realization that he misses her.
He wonders if she is concerned about him, wherever in the world she might be. He wonders what it really means that she sent him this rose; he knows that she thinks of him, that she wishes him to get better, and even more, that she wants him to know that she cares about him – but what does she feel? Is she worried that he has been shot, is she relieved, happy, that he is safe? What if he had died? Would she have cried, as the image of Jim Moriarty had devilishly suggested while Sherlock was drowning in the depths of his mind palace? Would she have been as angry with him as she had shown him the day he had knocked at her door after jumping off St-Bart’s? Would she have just moved on?
That thought gives Sherlock food for thought. Moving on? He and Irene Adler have not seen each other for months, and he has barely tried to keep in touch with her… It is strange enough that she has not moved on already. She really can be as stubborn as him, sometimes.
But such questions hardly matter, because the flower is there, in his room, and he knows that she thinks about him. That she is here – wherever she really is – for him, in the very unlikely case that he needs her help or support. She has never told him that. But it may not be the first time she tries to show him what she feels, and if he was not such a moron, maybe he would have been able to read between the lines. But the Woman always manages, one way or another, to make him blind.
He keeps musing about all this for an indefinite period of time, until his weak body manifests itself by way of a sudden peak of pain. With a great effort, he manages to stretch out his left arm and triggers a strong rush of morphine. He sinks back in his pillow while the drug takes over and soothes his envelope, slowly stunning his mind in the same time. His thoughts gradually fly away, leaving him more relaxed and oblivious. He needs that now; and he knows that every time he will wake up again, he will feel better and better, until he can solve this whole bloody case. Now is just not the time yet.
With a last confused thought for John, Mary, Magnussen and Irene Adler, Sherlock surrenders to sleep.
Now is the time.
Sherlock is standing in his hospital room, bandaged, dressed and focused. It seems to him that his wound has been healing for ages; he cannot afford to wait more than he already has. The truth must be revealed: Lady Smallwood is still to be helped, Magnussen to be defeated, and, more importantly, John needs to know. About Mary, who she was, who she is, what she did. Sherlock needs John to solve his cases, and John needs to know the whole truth, so he can move on. Thus, the sooner, the better.
Wasting no time, the detective heads towards the window, with the intention of escaping by the facade, but he stops dead as his eyes meet the poor sight of the piece of furniture that used to wear the Woman’s rose and card, which he hid under the bed as soon as he could walk again. It had been bold of her to send him these – anyone could have made the connection with her, though she is supposed to be dead and buried –, but he could not resolve to let her pay for that gesture. She still has to keep her distance from him and her old life, crouched in the shadows like a wild animal; she hates that, lying low, but as long as she does, she will remain safe and sound. Unless she keeps behaving like she used to – which she probably does, but whatever. She is still alive, after all, so she must be reasonable enough.
In any case, he has to take her gifts with him; the people who will look after him, once he is gone, must definitely not find such an obvious evidence of her continued existence.
He flattens himself with a wince and ventures his hand under the bed, groping around until his fingers graze the dry petals of the withered flower – a few days with neither sun nor water were lethal. He grabs it by its smooth stem and draws it towards him, along with the small rectangle of cardboard. As he glances at it, something eventually strikes him.
The smooth stem.
For some reason, the rose has no thorns.
It could be trivial, but if there is a thing that Sherlock knows, it is that Irene Alder never leaves anything to chance. Each of her choices have clear purposes. Then…
In his current intellectual and emotional state, thinking about all the possible implications makes Sherlock’s brain threaten to crash. He forces himself to come back to the situation, carefully setting down the question in a secured section of his mind palace.
He just allows himself a minuscule, tired smile. Bloody Woman…
His mind clear again, he rises, places the two items in the inside pocket of his coat, and heads back towards the window. He glances down to the hospital’s parking lot, far below him and perfectly lit by the afternoon sun. This is gonna be particularly tedious.
He cannot hold back a smirk as he steps across the ledge of the window.
The Game is on.