Chapter Text
This is wrong, but I can’t help but feel like
There ain’t nothing more right, baby
I’d be breaking all my rules to see you
And you smile, that beautiful smile
I am no one special
And I’m invisible and everyone knows who you are
Tell me things like
“I can’t take my eyes off you”
- Superstar (Taylor’s Version) by Taylor Swift
I’d completed the cycle and ended up where I’d begun: a hospital bed.
Not that I was conceived in a hospital bed. (As far as I know, anyway). But I had begun my life on a bed similar to this, and here I was again, opening my eyes with an entire life ahead of me, pages and pages of unmarked whiteness, only the faded scribbles where pencil notes had been rubbed out with a worn eraser.
There were monitors above me, and things hooked into me. My head felt weirdly heavy, slumped onto a white-covered pillow. There was something lying against my furled hand. I lifted my gaze - why were my eyelids made of lead? Weren’t they meant to be made of skin? - and slowly looked up at a man sitting by my bed.
His head was turned away, and he was texting rapidly. Now that I focused on it, I could hear the clicking noises as he typed. His hand was on the duvet next to mine. Not holding it, just…there.
I had no idea who the fuck he was.
He had dark curly hair, and a dark blue coat with the collar flipped up. It obscured most of his features, but I could see a high cheekbone and a weirdly-shaped nose and preternaturally pale skin.
There was a vampire sitting vigil at my bedside. Okay.
The man turned abruptly, as if he’d heard my mental snicker. “Oh, you’re awake. Could have just told me. It’s not like you need an excuse to stare at me normally.”
My eyes widened as they met his - glacial, sharp, the lightest blue I’d ever seen, like a ski-slope reflecting the rich blue skies above. I opened my mouth, the movement of my tongue sending a spike of nausea to my guts.
He carried on. “Oh, don’t tell me you’ve turned into a vegetable. That would be tedious. Though I suppose you would still have a higher IQ than Anderson.”
I closed my dry mouth and just stared at him wordlessly.
The man narrowed his eyes. “That was meant to be a compliment. Obviously.”
I licked my lips, and then tried to sniff in a big inhale. I could hear people on the other side of the drawn curtains around the doorway of the little room I was in. My first syllable was a croak.
“Wh-”
“What?” the man said impatiently. His eyes darted momentarily down to his phone. For some reason, that irritated the shit out of me. I scraped together enough saliva.
“Who the fuck are you?”
****
“What’s the last thing you remember?” the doctor asked.
“I…don’t know.” I knew my name, date of birth. I could remember my entire childhood. It was news to me that I was twenty-four…I remembered being twenty-two. So I’d lost two years of my life. And, apparently, everything that came with that.
“Anything at all? Do you remember how you sustained your injuries?”
“No.” I raised my hand to touch my hair, gingerly. It was longer than I remembered. “Not…really. Just - I must’ve hit my head, right? It hurts.”
“Hmm, yes,” the doctor said non-committally. “We’ll have to run a few scans. Nothing to worry about. This is most likely temporary.”
He turned to speak to the hovering nurses, and the man, who had been at my bedside the whole time, standing with his hands clasped behind him, leaned forward.
“You don’t remember the name Sherlock Holmes?”
I glanced up. “No. Is that your name?”
He grimaced. “Yes.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
He grimaced again. “We’ve met.”
The doctor left, and the older nurse looked at us. “You need rest, not excitement,” she said to me. “Mr Holmes, I trust that you will be responsible?”
“Not famed for that, as you obviously know, Nurse Cornish, since you’ve read my blogs,” Sherlock Holmes replied. “But I’ll take care of her.”
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said, and left, taking her partner with her.
I could hear the noises of a hospital all around me; other monitors beeping, trolleys rattling, clinking and lowered voices. I hated hospitals. I hated places where the people were suffering. Once, coming to a place like this had filled me with panic. Now, I didn’t feel so terrible. Which was confusing.
“So…who am I now, then?” I asked, trying to take my mind off things by immediately referring to the one thing I was thinking about.
“A barrister,” Sherlock Holmes replied.
I gaped. “What?” That could not be true. It just couldn’t be. I had sworn to myself, after seeing how my great-uncle was at family dinners, to never be such a-
My tangent was broken when the man let out a sudden chuckle. “No.”
“God, you…” I bit back my instinctive fucker. “She said no excitement!”
“And I made no promises.” He sat down again, studying me closely. “You can’t remember your accident?”
“Can you?”
“I wasn’t there.” His jaw tightened. “Investigations are still ongoing. I believe it is probably Moriarty, or one of his henchmen. Mycroft has people looking into it as we speak-”
I stared at him helplessly. He raised an eyebrow. “Right. Not good, at the moment. Irrelevant data, I shall tell you later. What do you want to know? You asked who you were. You’ll have to be a bit more specific. As scathingly accurate as my deductions are, I cannot actually divine someone’s soul.”
“Do you always talk this fast?”
“Yes. You asked me this before. It’s a vain attempt to allow my verbal output to keep up with my mental input.”
“Okay.” I’d been awake less than an hour, and met someone who was a stranger, and yet not. I wasn’t going to indulge him. Blue eyes swept across my face as I pondered my questions. There were only approximately five billion of them, so it didn’t take me too long.
“Where am I?”
“You tell me,” he shot back instantly.
I took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Do you - do you talk to me a lot?”
“I talk to you the most that I talk to everyone, though John is a close second. So yes.”
“Do we always do this…back-forth? It’s exhausting.”
“Mostly, yes. I challenge you. Sometimes you slap me.”
I couldn’t hold back a quirk of pride at my lost-self’s strong morals. “Good. Anyway, er - everyone has a British accent. I think it’s a London accent. So are we in London?”
“Very good. Correct. St Barts’, to be precise.”
“When did I move to London?”
“Eighteen months ago. You have known me for that long, incidentally.”
“How did I meet you? Why?”
“You were destitute. I offered you a place to stay.”
“I agreed?” Forget being proud of myself. I was aghast now. What about stranger danger? What had past-me been thinking?
“Not without a fight. Once I deduced your state of affairs, you agreed. You stayed with Mrs Hudson the first few days.”
“Who?”
“Oh, for God’s-” The man let out a slow breath. “Bloody hell, this is going to be infuriating.” He met my eyes again. “You’re my flatmate, Y/N. You have lived with me for eighteen months. Your past circumstances are not something you usually wish to talk about, so I won’t allude to them right now, or Nurse Cornish would have my internal organs. Well, Molly would, actually, but - Irrelevant! You have a good job, and you have a circle of friends - mutual friends of ours, mostly. A few days ago, you were kidnapped, and you were thrown out of a ruined castle’s window and fell. At least, what’s what we assume happened. You lost your memory, so you can’t be helpful enough to tell us. The person behind your kidnapping is my archenemy, who will stop at nothing to attack me and those he deems important to me. You have been unconscious for over ten hours, nine hours of which I have spent with you. Once you recover enough to get out of this place, my brother Mycroft will be assigning you a security detail, since a second attempt on your life might, this time, be fatal.” The heart monitor was beeping loudly. I was staring numbly.
“Is that enough information to satisfy your questions for now?”
Nurse Cornish rushed back in. “Sherlock, I told you!”
****
The amnesia should last, I was told, a few days. A week or two at most. Trying to strain myself, remembering stuff, would only make it worse; I should simply relax and not stress. Memories would come seeping back to me, little by little, like the extra dregs of water coiled up amongst drained noodles, dripping into the sink below.
“But where am I going to go?” I asked helplessly. I was dressed now, standing by my vacated bed. Sherlock Holmes stood opposite, hands tucked into his posh coat pockets.
“Home,” he said, a hidden Obviously somewhere in the back of his throat.
“But I don’t even know you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course you do. I can provide testimonials. Or witnesses. There are plenty of people who have seen us together.”
“I don’t even know where I am.” I took a deep breath. “I’ve never…I’ve never lived in London before. It’s so busy here. I don’t know Baker Street, if that’s what it’s called. I’m…” I was tempted to crawl back into the hospital bed. “I don’t…”
Shameful hot tears burnt the back of my eyes. I bowed my head.
Sherlock huffed. There was a rustle of coat against bedsheets. Then he was standing beside me. “You can’t stay here,” he said matter-of-factly. “You can stay with Mrs Hudson if you wish - You’ll like her, if you continue to take to people the same way you did before. But being in a hospital environment is rarely conducive to recovery, especially mental recovery. Come along.”
There wasn’t much to argue with him about. So I went, tucking my arms around myself, wearing a dark red coat that I didn’t remember.
He swept me out to the front of the hospital; hailed a black cab; gave an address. We drove there in silence, my face turned to the glassy window, watching the grey streets passing by, full of so, so many people. The skies were grey too, the kind of grey that threatened rain. The cab made a turn, and I felt a weird pull. I didn’t know this place, but my body did. My body had known to brace for the vehicle’s turn.
We arrived. Got out. My heart was pounding, a physical ache under my sternum. I didn’t have a place in the world anymore; not even with myself. The only person I had was Sherlock Holmes, a strange man opening a black door for me and ushering me through into a narrow hallway.
“Up the stairs,” he said, shutting the door.
I walked up the steps slowly. There was a twist; a small second set. A door, open, at the top. Another set of stairs. I stopped, uncertain.
“The flat is through the door,” Sherlock said, coming up behind me. I twisted to let him by. He’d taken his coat off, now straightening a black jacket.
“Where’s my room?” My bedroom would be my territory, full of my things. There had to be some part of my old self - the self I currently was - in there. Maybe being surrounded by my belongings would trigger a sense of safety, or home - both of which I sorely needed.
Sherlock, now a few feet into a sitting-room, hesitated, hands hovering over his shirt collar. “Hmm.”
It was the first time I’d seen him at a loss for words. “What? Do I not have one?” A strange sense of panic rushed through me.
“You keep your things upstairs,” Sherlock said quickly. “Door on the left. The door on the right, with the atrocious live love laugh sign, is John’s bedroom.”
“What do you mean, keep my things there? Where - where do I normally sleep?”
Sherlock sighed, then turned to face me. Backlit by the light of two windows, on either side, it gave him the strange effect of being an unreal apparition - a genie, maybe. “You tend to share my bed, most nights.”
My throat closed over. I gripped onto the doorframe, weird rushes of adrenaline pounding through me. “Are we…What are we?” I demanded. “If we’re some sort of - thing-” A man like this did not have a girlfriend, but - “Some kind of arrangement - Maybe you could have told me!”
“Oh, get your mind out of its filthy sordid little gutter,” Sherlock tsked impatiently. “I have a sleep impediment. Your company, as we discovered one night, solved that problem. Besides, my bedroom is much nearer to the bathroom. It is a mutually beneficent, and entirely innocent, arrangement.”
“A sleep impediment?”
He shifted. “Yes. I’m an insomniac. Rarely sleep, ever.”
“Except when…I’m with you?”
“Yes.”
“There’s treatments for insomnia, though.”
“It isn’t a usual kind of insomnia.” Sherlock flapped his hand at me. “I am not a usual kind of man, as you’ll discover. Or, rediscover, I suppose. Go and look at your room. I’ll bring your pyjamas up, I suppose.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, turning away.
****
The walls of my room were a pleasant light green. The bedspread was a rich, jarring crimson. It was quite a bare little place, all things considered. There were a few paperbacks on the windowsill. The window itself was latticed. I stood there, fisting onto the grey curtains, and watched the world. There were pigeons in a gutter opposite.
“Stan and Billy,” I murmured, then bit my lip, discomfited.
I didn’t see anything I remembered, at first. Then I came across a bracelet, carefully tucked into the drawer of my bedside cabinet. I’d had it since I was sixteen. I touched it reverently, then shut the drawer again, like the corpse drawer in a morgue.
I froze. Why would I think that simile?
Sherlock stepped into my room without knocking. There was an armful of soft, flannelled clothing that he dumped on my bed unceremoniously. A pair of knickers spilled free and tumbled out brazenly. I couldn’t find it in myself to care. That was obviously the indiscretions of a different me, after all.
“Have…we ever been to a morgue?” I asked tentatively, feeling stupid. Why the hell would we-
Sherlock whirled, eyes wide. “You remembered?” One look at my face and he subsided a bit. “No, you didn’t. Well, yes, we have. Several times. The hospital morgue of St Bart’s, actually.”
“...but, why?” I asked helplessly.
Sherlock opened his mouth, then turned instead to the door. Another man stood there, arms crossed over a faded jumper. His expression was wry, but his eyes were kind when he looked at me.
“Y/N, may I introduce you - again - to the world’s first, foremost, and only Consulting Detective and utter bastard? And to his two martyred flatmates-cum-assistants-cum-friends?”
****
John gave me a mobile phone in a police evidence bag. Apparently it had been found, switched off, at the place where I’d been held hostage. Not that I could remember a single bit of it.
I lay on my crimson bedspread and clicked the phone on. The lockscreen was of Big Ben.
I had a pin.
Dammit.
I cursed out loud and threw the phone aside. It bounced on my duvet. I glared up at the ceiling, ignoring the beginnings of a headache that promised to be absolutely horrific.
“Anything wrong?”
I glanced up. Sherlock was standing in the doorway, hands interlinked behind him, eyebrow arched.
“My phone is locked. And…obviously, I don’t know the code.”
“Oh. Well, I do. It’s very elementary. Laughably simple.” Sherlock strode over, snatched up my phone and keyed in a code, one-handed. He tossed it back to me. “Anything else?”
“...No. Yes. How do you know my phone code? I feel like I probably…didn’t…give it to you?”
Sherlock smirked. “I am very good at deducing things. Lucky you, getting to experience that again. Anyway, I need to index John’s socks while he’s with Mrs Hudson. Laters.” He strode back out of my room.
I gaped after him. “…sock index?” I repeated weakly, but he’d already vanished into John’s room, with a clinking of the little live love laugh sign.
I turned my attention to my phone. The homescreen was of a skull on a mantelpiece. It looked familiar. I scrolled in. Yeah, it was the mantelpiece downstairs.
I tried scrolling through my texts, but it was a bewildering mess, mostly to Sherlock, referencing too many things I’d never heard of. There was an entire groupchat called SHERLOCK’S BABYSITTERS. My headache was getting worse.
I clicked on my photos, instead. Maybe this would spur some memories, in a more peaceful way than reading little pixellated messages.
There were photos of places, places I’d never seen. Some were famous London landmarks; others were…confusing. Graffiti on an alley wall? A weird little ornament covered in…Ohmygod, was that bloodsplatter? What the fuck?
There were other photos. Myself with John. An elderly woman smiling at the camera, holding a packet of ginger-nuts, her eyes made up glamorously with smoky eyeshadow.
I swiped, and a photo of Sherlock popped up, sitting in an armchair, eyes wide as he looked up at the camera. His hair was impressively dishevelled, and he seemed to be wearing a dressing-gown. I guessed he hadn’t been prepared for the photo op.
More photos. Pictures of coffee; a painting - in the glass reflection, I could see Sherlock’s silhouette. Some other people I didn’t know. There was no sparks of recognition when I saw them, either. They could have been complete strangers.
I let out a slow breath, trying to calm down, and flicked to the folder of whatsapp messages.
I nearly gagged at the first one. It was a foot. A disembodied, bloodied, pale human foot. Sherlock had to have sent me this. I scrolled through, faster and faster. More horrific things. God, who was this man? Did I share a flat with a bloody serial-killer?
Then, a different photo. A wide grassy field, lit with sunshine and clovers and dandelions. There was police tape, police cars, in the background; right at the forefront, completely oblivious, was…me. And Sherlock.
His hair was ruffled on the breeze, face tilted diagonally down to me with an expression of annoyance. I was standing by him, our arms pressed together, halfway through saying something cheeky. Sherlock’s gloved hand was raised in gesticulation; my right hand was up, brushing back hair from my face.
I could almost feel the wind in my hair, the sunshine on my bare arms, hear Sherlock’s deep fast voice, hear my own laughter.
I had a look to see who’d sent me this. Someone called Greg Lestrade. The accompanying message read
Sherlock in his natural habitat with another: a state of amicability rarely seen. GL.
My reply had been a few shocked emojis and a When did you take this? I didn’t even notice! But thanks for sending it!
I went back to the photo and stared at it for a bit longer. There I was, grinning up at a man I didn’t know anymore. I wished I could tap my former self on the shoulder and ask her for a few pointers. What had happened? Why did I clearly trust this man with my life?
The phone went black.
Why had trusting him clearly put me in danger?
****
I didn’t sleep well. My head throbbed, sending red spikes of pain through my temple, pricking the backs of my eyes.
I obviously knew Sherlock. But I didn’t. My body knew him. But when I looked at his face, I couldn’t remember a thing.
This other version of me was a completely different person. I wanted to know what she was like.
I wanted to know why she had become Sherlock’s other half. Why the hell did she share his bed? Even if in the most innocent sense?
Why did it feel like I didn’t want to sleep alone, right now? Like I was waiting for someone to curl up behind me?
****
I got up early, as soon as I heard John going downstairs. My clothing style was different now, too. I put on jeans and a baggy jumper, and went down. John was sitting at the kitchen table, flipping open a newspaper. He glanced up.
“Y/N, hey. How do you feel today?”
“I still have a headache,” I admitted, stepping into the room. “I’m okay.”
“Remember anything? Here, sit down, I’ll put the kettle on.”
I sat, watching John fiddle with the kettle. “Not really. It’s really infuriating.” I rubbed both hands over my forehead. “It feels like…It doesn’t really feel like anything’s missing, except that I obviously know it is, if that makes sense? It kind of feels like…it never happened.”
John sat down again, sympathetic. “It must feel strange. I’ve dealt with a few amnesiacs during the war…”
“War?”
“Oh. Yeah. I’m an army doctor. I, er, came back from Afghan a while ago.”
“So we’re both Sherlock’s flatmates. How did you two meet?”
“At St Bart’s, through my friend, Stamford.” John peered at me. “I do the dangerous stuff with Sherlock. You…”
“I’m the stay-at-home flatmate?” I quipped.
“No, I mean, yeah, you are, but you keep him…Sane, I suppose. Sensible. You’re definitely a good influence on him. Especially since the whole Mori-”
“Whoo, coming in!”
I turned my head, and John looked up, as an elderly lady came in, with four steaming cups of tea on a tray. It was the same old lady I had a photo of. She didn’t have her eyeshadow on today, but she was just as glamorous.
“Ah, Y/N, dear,” she said, “you’re up early. You need to rest!”
I dithered, unsure how to react. She suddenly shook her head, as John took the tray from her.
“Oh, silly me, of course. I’m Mrs Hudson, my dear. Your landlady - not your housekeeper, though you’ve certainly never been a bother; not like Sherlock. How are you feeling, dear?”
“I’m…” I cleared my throat and smiled a thanks as John put a cup in front of me. It was coffee; the way I normally took it. “I’m okay. Kind of disoriented.”
“Of course you are, you poor thing,” Mrs Hudson clucked her tongue. “You need to focus on getting better. That involves, in my opinion, a lot of tea and a lot of biscuits, all delivered by a string of men-in-waiting.” She winked at me.
My throat closed up again, tears welling in my eyes. I ducked my head, steam from my mug spiralling into my face. She was kind. She was motherly. And I didn’t know her, but I knew I had, and I would, and I knew she was in my corner, and somehow, after everything, that felt-
“Stop upsetting Y/N with your niceness, Mrs Hudson,” came another voice, slightly rough with sleep. I felt the sudden warmth of someone standing right behind my chair, along with a whiff of ancient tobacco and a scientific chemical I couldn’t name.
Mrs Hudson tutted in my peripheral vision. “Now, Sherlock, you had better treat that poor girl right,” she said, rounding the table and sitting beside John.
Sherlock shifted slightly, his dressing-gown whipping against the leg of my chair. “When have I not, Mrs Hudson?”
“She can’t even testify to it, either way,” John pointed out, raising his mug to me in acknowledgement. Sherlock huffed a laugh.
It was all too much. This was home - a powerful, utterly new feeling to me. I had a home. I had a home, and people to fill it, and I didn’t even remember them. But they remembered me. I was an interloper in my own life, and yet they were still being kind to me. I stood up abruptly, and went over to the sink, fiddling randomly with the taps, trying to hide the tears that were dripping down my cheeks.
Inhale. Exhale. Calm down. This was not something to cry over. In a few days, you’ll remember everything. Maybe that other girl you were would laugh at how you’re acting right now. Maybe she has the luxury of belonging so securely that she doesn’t need to cry in amazement over it.
There was a rustle of fabric. Sherlock was standing by my side again. I couldn’t help remembering the photo “Greg” had snapped of us; Sherlock was on my other side now, but the mirroring was similar. I hoped he couldn’t see my tears.
I exhaled one last time and turned to the fridge, trying to hide my face for a bit longer.
A warm hand closed firmly over mine, fingers between mine, resting on the fridge’s handle.
I looked up. “What?”
Sherlock arched an eyebrow down at me. “I am merely trying to prevent your initial reaction from happening a second time. Once was quite enough.”
“...What do you mean?”
“Oh,” Mrs Hudson sighed. “He keeps body parts in the fridge, dear. In my fridge, to be correct!” she added.
“The first time you looked inside, you were…unprepared,” Sherlock said. He lifted my hand off the fridge. “There was a human head.”
“A human…head. Seriously? What?”
“And a spine in a bin-bag,” John added.
“So what’s in here this time?”
Sherlock smirked, and dropped my hand, swinging the fridge open. I braced myself for something horrific, something as grotesque as the photos I’d seen last night-
“Margarine,” Sherlock said, flaunting it in my face. “Don’t start yelling again, won’t you? It was tiresome the first time.”
Trust me, it surprised me as much as everyone else when I burst out laughing.
****
After breakfast, Sherlock and John took me to meet two people. Molly and Greg; the same Greg who had sent me the photo. We met in the carpark of St Bart’s. Greg was leaning against a silver car, and Molly was wearing a white lab-coat that fluttered in the dull breeze.
“Oh, Y/N, I’m so glad to see you. Are you alright? Of course you’re not. I’m so sorry. I’m so glad you’re safe,” Molly said, once we were within earshot. “Oh! I’m, I’m Molly Hooper. I’m a pathologist.”
“Hey,” I said, trying to smile warmly. “We’re friends, right?”
She chewed her lip. “Oh, god, I hope so! Otherwise you were just pitying me all those times we had girl-nights, so…”
My smile turned genuine. “No, don’t worry. We were definitely friends.”
“Good to see you up and about,” Greg said briskly. “You need to make a statement with the Met, actually-”
“That would be an unspeakably pointless exercise of bureaucracy, Gavin, given that Y/N cannot remember anything-”
“-But it will have to wait until after your recovery,” Greg finished, shooting a glare at an unrepentant Sherlock.
“So…are you two…” I waved my hand awkwardly between Greg and Molly.
Molly flushed, and Greg chewed the inside of his mouth. “Just a few months, yeah. It’s working well.”
“It is,” Molly added quietly. John clapped Greg on the shoulder.
“What?” Sherlock said, looking befuddled. “You’re dating?” We watched him look between the happy couple, faster and faster, eyes narrowing. “How did I not see it? The clues are there. Of course. How did I not - Why did no one tell me?”
“You were busy with Moriarty, mate,” John said. “And…”
“Did you know?” Sherlock demanded, whirling on me. I blinked at him.
“Of course you don’t know. Argh.” Sherlock glared at them. “I suppose felicitations are in order. You may have them. Do try not to cheat on him, Molly, won’t you? And Gavin, be prepared that she will not become any less cat-crazy simply because she is not single now. She is thinking to adopt another kitten.”
“I…know.” Greg shook his head. “Because we talk. You know, like a functioning relationship. Instead of…” He trailed off awkwardly.
Sherlock shifted slightly, his coatsleeve pressing firmly against mine. “Yes?” he said challengingly.
“Just leave it.” Greg looked at me. “You’re alright, yeah? Apart from the amnesia?”
“I think so. I assume I am?” I realised that Sherlock had moved again, slightly obscuring my view. I stepped around him.
Is he being…protective?
Would I know, if I wasn’t like this? Or do I take this sort of thing for granted? Is this normality, when it’s with Sherlock?
Greg opened his mouth again, but then his phone buzzed. He leant off his car to retrieve it, making an apologetic face.
“...Donovan? Yeah, yeah, I’m at Barts’ - Is it Moriarty?”
Sherlock stiffened. I sensed it. Then he moved back in front of me, just a bit.
Definitely protective. Stop trying to deduce him. You’ll never understand when you’re like this. I stepped back around him; it was almost like a battle now. Our little game of fidgeting had ended me up near John, who gave me a slightly confused nod and smile.
“...Shit, really? Where’s that, then? No - What? Oh, yeah, that pub. Well, I’m actually with him now. Okay, I’m getting there.” He clicked off and glanced at Molly. “Sally says hi.”
Molly smiled. Greg turned to Sherlock. “There’s been a murder down near Trafalgar Square. I’d say it’s about a seven or eight, by your scale. I’m off now. Coming?”
John started towards the car, then hesitated, looking back at Sherlock.
Sherlock fidgeted with his gloved hands for a moment, then tilted his head and looked at me.
“...What?” I said, confused. “I’m…I’m not coming, am I?”
“You don’t like crime-scenes with human bodies,” Sherlock said.
“Well, at least that’s still the same about me. Why are you still staring?”
Sherlock grimaced.
“He’s waiting for your permission,” Greg said, failing to suppress a small guffaw.
I blinked. “Why? You can go. I…don’t mind.” Do I? Sherlock felt like a lifeline, as much as he was a stranger to me.
Sherlock stared at me for another minute, then flapped his hand at John. “Get a cab. Take her back to Baker Street, then join me.”
“What?” John, Greg and I said together. Molly watched the scene play out, a tiny smile on the corner of her lips.
“I’m not helpless,” I began. He cut over me.
“Yes. You are. You don’t remember living in London, you do not have an emotional tether to Baker Street yet, and you are starting to get another headache, thanks to the onslaught of new, yet old, data your mind is trying to process. If you do not mind me leaving you, then John will take you home. Otherwise I will stay here. Moriarty is still on the loose, and I do not trust Mycroft’s security protection, with your life, against Moriarty’s wits.” He glowered at me, clearly expecting an argument.
Behind him, both Greg and John gaped.
Oh, definitely protective.
“Okay,” I said at last, softly. A crisp packet blew by on the breeze. A nap sounded like a good idea now, actually. And I suddenly felt prickles on the back of my neck as I remembered that someone had kidnapped me. Someone might try to kill me. “Do you mind, John?”
“Not at all.” John saluted Greg. “Later. See you, Molly.”
Sherlock took a step towards Greg’s car as the latter got in, then turned back to me with a whirl of his blue coat. “Are you sure?”
“It’s fine.” I hesitated. I think it is. I don’t know. I’m playing a game I don’t know the steps to, with you. And you’re not leading, because we used to be equal. “See you later.” I swung my leg over the tiny little brick wall that separated the carpark and pavement. “Enjoy your nice murder!” I shot over my shoulder.
I just caught the edge of Sherlock’s sudden grin before he got in the passenger seat.