Work Text:
I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,whoever I was, I was
alive
for a little while.– Mary Oliver, “Dogfish”
Some three or four months after the – well, after three or four months, Sherlock really hasn’t settled for a concise name for the affair. The Apostle Murders: catchy, but excludes too much. The Oxford Situation: same issue, a bit juvenile. The Paris and Constantinople Trip: too geographical. The Time That Sherlock Found Out His Entire Life Was A Lie, That His Sister Was Alive And Well, That His Mother Was Right About All Her Supposed Madness, That His Father Was A Greedy Warmongerer And Liar, And Also Then Sherlock Got Shot (In Paris): far too wordy, and still excludes much of the relevant substance, exempli gratia:
Sherlock descends down the stairs a fine morning, winter gradually dripping away, and James is there at the dining table with Mother, leaning back in his seat and gesticulating fancifully. Standing in the entrance, Sherlock doesn’t hear what James is saying at all, just the pitch of his voice, the way it moves throughout the air. Mother is laughing along merrily.
They have not seen each other since Constantinople (to put it briefly and geographically). Or rather, it was soon afterwards. James had come to the estate to see that everyone settled before taking his leave and slipping away – no one had asked him to, though Sherlock cannot deny that his shoulder had been a bit chilly, that the glimpse of the key may have proven itself too – much. From what Sherlock has heard, James has found himself working under some scholar in London, which is to mean that he is presumably using the poor scholar’s resources and books to work on his own schemes when he is not terrorizing London’s female population.
Sherlock, of course, certainly doesn’t care about all of that gossip, and he certainly hasn’t starkly felt the absence of James. He’s rarely in London; he has been tied up with managing the estate in the aftermath of Silas’ death. Mycroft, having fully assumed the role of the reticent patriarch, is really handling most of the legal and business affairs in between his Foreign Office escapades.
Sherlock is instead mainly working through the reams of his father’s scientific notes, cataloguing and organizing in attempts at understanding. The humiliating thing is how long it takes to get through only notebooks. He wishes he could say it was only because of their complexity – and sometimes they are disparate and indecipherable – but some days, it’s as if there are walls in Sherlock’s mind, blocking him from even looking at the pages of work.
Then there is the issue of Beatrice – not that she is an issue. The very opposite. Sherlock is happy she’s back, of course he is, he would never wish otherwise. It’s only – anticlimactic, perhaps, is a useful turn of phrase here. She visits from wherever she lives – she doesn’t divulge the details – a couple times of a month, seemingly to placate Mother so she doesn’t submit to flights of fancy. They’ll talk in hushed tones, or they’ll argue, or they’ll laugh, or they’ll do all three at once.
When they do all manage to eat together, the four Holmes left standing, it’s still awkward. Bea likes when Mycroft tells stories of Sherlock’s adolescent misadventures, but always grows cold when Sherlock himself pipes up. Sometimes her lips twist in a certain way and Sherlock sees Silas, plain and simple. But he fears – he nearly knows – that when she looks across the table, she sees the same in him. So they don’t really speak. It’s for the best.
All of which is to say: James is here. James is in Sherlock’s childhood home again. His curls have grown a bit longer, teasing the nape of his neck. Sherlock, who has kept a strict haircut routine lest he get bombarded with memories of prison, does not prefer such overgrown lengths. And now James’ hand is brushing on Mother’s elbow. Sherlock is seized by weariness; it nearly surprises him in its habitual ease.
“Darling!” Mother exclaims when she sees him. James turns too, grin already affixed to his lips, a little too ready – he knew Sherlock was there. Of course. “Look who came to visit!”
“James,” Sherlock greets. Silas’ key, always on his person, festers in his righthand inner suit pocket. James hadn’t asked more about it after they left Constantinople. God forgive Sherlock for how he’d liked watching James’ dark eyes burn, though, for just a moment. He had only wanted to see what James would do, really. The face he would make, the way his voice would pitch. It was an intellectual pursuit.
“Sherlock,” James says now, canting his head upwards in a way that reminds Sherlock significantly of some kind of dare. His accent rolls through Sherlock’s name, pulling it apart: Suuure-lock.
Sherlock clasps his hands together behind his back in a feeble attempt at self control. “When did you get in?”
“Ah, just a bit ago,” James says, waving it away. He’s already rid himself of his own jacket; his arms strain at the white fabric of his shirt. “Didn’t want to wake you, had to let you get your beauty sleep.”
Sherlock, of course, finds this hard to believe. Perhaps James had trouble finding a replacement for Sherlock in London, and now he’s coming to collect whatever it is he wants. It’s an unbecoming thought, startling Sherlock in its callousness. But James doesn’t say anything else, not yet.
Mother, however, is giving him a bit of a worried look. “Did you sleep alright?”
“Fine,” Sherlock says airily, pulling for a seat on the opposite end of the table. “Fine! Please, Mother, would you pass some bread.”
Mother’s caution doesn’t leave. James’ smile stays on his lips, perpetual as it always was.
—
Breakfast is chiefly James and Mother chattering on – apparently they’ve missed each other terribly – while Sherlock barely listens. He soon excuses himself to his bedroom to sit at his desk, the amateur laboratory of his youth, where a stack of papers waits for him. These are Silas’ records from some kind of experiments he did while on a brief fellowship to Oxford, many years ago, when Sherlock was very young. He remembers this summer, though: the first time he had been to Oxford. He muses to himself as he remembers the libraries, Father lifting him to look at a row of books that he can barely recall –
“Christ, but you were a tiny runt, weren’t you?” says a voice next to Sherlock (who is next to memory-Sherlock). He spins to see James in only his vest, strong brows pulled together.
“Jesus, James,” says Sherlock crossly, jolted out of the memory and back into his study. James is indeed there, leaning over Sherlock’s desk to help himself to some papers. For a moment, Sherlock doesn’t even feel anything amiss, until –
“Invigorating!” James declares sardonically as Sherlock remembers that he must try to snatch them back. “I can see why they’re top-secret. Father dearest couldn’t have left you a pretty penny instead?”
“Don’t,” Sherlock says; it tears out of him, sharp and unruly as he finally takes the sheaf back. “Enough. Please.”
“Sorry, sorry.” James puts his hands up, a half-apologetic performance of remorse. “Mea culpa.”
“Yes, it is,” Sherlock says, stern as he can, organizing the sheets before he finally puts them down. James is very nearly lording over him. It makes something stir in the pit of his stomach, which makes him stand up so they’re eye-level.
“God, what’s gotten into you?” James appraises. He looks strangely wrong, here, like a daguerreotype that’s been painted over in clashing colors. There was a time when Sherlock could’ve so easily guessed where he’d be, an extension of his intuition. Now he’s – here. “I promise I wasn’t being untoward with Cordelia.”
“My mother,” grouses Sherlock before exhaling, nails digging into the meat of his palms. His anger, it feels – useless. Unnecessary. And sometimes it bends his words enough that he sounds like – well. It wouldn’t be his mother, would it? It would be the arm gripping him towards him the cliff ledge, the black lake –
“So I’ve been wondering – do you remember?” James asks. There’s something keen and speculative in his dark eyes as he rounds the corner of the desk, leaving no barrier between him and Sherlock.
“Do I remember what,” Sherlock answers, irritable.
“How to dodge, of course,” James says, and his fist appears in Sherlock’s periphery.
Sherlock does, in fact, dodge, mostly on instinct. A couple of weeks ago, he was thinking about getting a few young men from town to properly teach him to fight, but Mother had interfered and ruled it out. Still, he’s a bit more ready to raise his hands and defend himself.
James’ grin is ferocious. For the first few moves, he’s the one advancing with big steps, big swings that are barely avoided, but Sherlock manages to surge forward, finding purchase in James’ side. James laughs when it connects – “There he is!” – loud and wonderful, so startling that it strikes Sherlock dumb, and a hook grazes his right cheek to boot. He finds that he unwisely does not try to predict James’ movements – surely by now you know – but only reacts. They squabble a bit more – punch, dodge, step, dodge, punch, step, dodge, dodge, dodge, step, step, step, ah, shit –
“Ah, ah, ah,” James says, hands scrambling to pin down Sherlock’s wrists on the wall his back is now to, the corner he is trapped in. “Out of practice, are we?”
“I don’t know where you’re practicing in London,” Sherlock pants, wrestling himself free. He gets his wrists back, but not his personal space.
James’ lips tick higher in the corner again, another dare. He really is rather close to Sherlock, enough that Sherlock feels his hot breath on his face. The last time they were this close, at least in this way, may have been in the tunnels of Paris, when Sherlock had been shot, prone on the ground. The memory is imperfect and uneven with adrenaline, but it is there: James clinging onto him –
Sherlock feels his shoulders lock a bit, an instinctual caution on the horizon, holding his breath. For just a second it’s Constantinople instead, and James has the equation still, and there’s ambition shining on his first friend’s teeth. Or – well. It wouldn’t just be Constantinople, would it? “James.”
“Ah, Sherlock,” James says. Something passes over his face, so brief that Sherlock would’ve missed it – or at least had a hard time finding it – at any other distance. It’s a strange shadow, almost melancholic, not what he would’ve expected at all. Suddenly, Sherlock hears his father’s voice: We are not above nature. Then it’s gone, replaced by James’ camera-flash smile. “Good game.”
He claps Sherlock’s arm, touch like a firebrand. Then he’s gone, too. By the time Sherlock emerges from his room, James is nowhere to be seen. He tries not to let it disturb him.
—
The next weekend, Beatrice is here. This is less surprising, as it is, Sherlock makes sure to tell himself, her home. Sherlock finds her in Silas’ study, sitting with her boots propped up on the desk, deep in thought, looking at nothing. That is, of course, until she’s looking at Sherlock.
“Beatrice,” Sherlock greets tightly. He does not come into this room if he can prevent it. Much of it is still the same with its taxidermied creatures.
Beatrice, on the other hand, looks perfectly at home. “Sherlock,” she returns in kind, eyes flicking over him analytically, somehow poised despite her ridiculous position.
He attempts, “Are you well?”
Beatrice makes no indication to answer, turning to a stack of books on the desk. She looks well enough, properly groomed and orderly. She’d probably have better luck making sense of Silas’ papers, Sherlock thinks bitterly, not for the first time.
He attempts, again, “Have you seen Mother?”
“Mother,” echoes Beatrice in a blank way. “For look you how cheerfully my mother looks.”
And my father died within these two hours. So her mood’s worse today. From Sherlock’s limited understanding, Beatrice’s feelings on Father and his death wax and wane with mercurial brutality: his embrace, then the gun pointed to kill him. But to put it on Mother – caring Mother, faithful Mother – is too much; a defensive instinct rears its head within Sherlock. “Bea.”
“Shirley,” Beatrice says, acerbic and unrepentant. She returns to her book.
Three (or four) months ago, Sherlock would’ve traded anything to hear her tease him in any sort of way again, and he – he is grateful. He’s immensely grateful. Everyday he knows he would’ve traded his place and stayed with Silas to labor at disaster so that she would be free. Of course it’s different for her, intertwined with Silas for all those years. She wouldn’t have become independent like Mycroft and Sherlock, wouldn’t have found it so easy to saw the limb off. Because it’s been easy for Sherlock, surrounded by his father’s work, day in and day out. Buying food and clothes and everything with his tainted, blood-soaked liar’s money.
But there is no time to think about that. So Sherlock mirrors his sister, picking up a book at random and sitting primly in the seat across from her – ah, Dickens. They become twisted mirrors of their youth, two-fifths of an ordinary scene around the fire: Mother reads out a periodical with a range of voices, the silliest making the three siblings giggle, even Mycroft. For a moment, Sherlock is there, leaning over Mother’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of the story. Then he’s turning his own page, idly wondering if Mycroft has time to read anything these days besides land deeds and foreign affair briefings.
Sherlock skims more than anything else; he’s always been a fast reader, and he knows this novel well enough. Soon he’s reached the end of the first stage of Pip’s Expectations: Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts…
“Beatrice,” he says aloud. It comes out in a tone that he hopes is sufficiently patient, sufficiently kind. She does look up wordlessly, a sharpness in her bright eyes, their shared inheritance from Mother. “It makes sense that you’d hate him. Silas.”
“Thank you for your permission, brother dear,” Beatrice says, biting, but doesn’t look down, not yet.
“I only mean,” Sherlock says slowly, stopping. Clearing his throat. The cliff, the black lake. I always knew – “You know how I’d understand if it was more than just hate as well.”
At first, Beatrice only watches him, eyes narrowed. She gets up to return her books to one of the shelves, fingers lingering on the dusty wood of a ledge. “You’d understand,” she eventually repeats in that empty way. “Hm.”
“We’re both returning here,” says Sherlock, folding his hands together. A weight on his shoulder, a stone in his throat. “Aren’t we?”
“Forgive me for finding it different,” replies Beatrice, but a divot appears between her brows as she recedes back into her contemplation. Sherlock’s gaze catches on how she flexes her hands at her side, grabbing for the fabric of her skirt. It must be terribly difficult, he thinks, to have to reshape her before-life into something so domestic.
He almost opens his mouth, despite himself; he almost says Beatrice, would you help me with some of Silas’ things?, he almost tries to reach over to her fidgeting fingers, he almost tries to close the gap and bear the bitterness. He almost shoves her back into the churning chasm of their father’s world that spit her up and left her broken – he has a sense, solid behind his breastbone, that she’d prefer it. He sees it as he’d see his own shaking hand as he holds his razor every morning after a night of restless sleep –
Then Beatrice scoffs to herself, terse like a sudden punctuation, shaking her head as she sweeps away. Sherlock sighs to himself, pinching the bridge of his nose as gets up to inspect the bookcase. Amongst the various copies is The Origin of Species, which has clearly been looked at recently: it’s free of dust.
He picks it up with a careful touch, paging through. It’s a perfectly fine copy. Something perfectly ordinary for a young woman invested in the sciences to read. The likeliest explanation, Sherlock reminds himself, a fatigued mantra, is always the simplest. There’s nothing to expect. They all must be trying to leave Silas behind. What else is there to do?
—
As spring arrives, Sherlock gets a spot of brighter news: Shou’an wires him from Constantinople, saying she’s on the way back to London. Sherlock has only heard from her a couple of times since – the ordeal. She seems to be well, well enough to leave the presumably-beautiful Gansu Corridor and trudge back to gray London, so Sherlock is optimistic about her state. She’s also seemed to gain an attachment – or at least amusement – to being called Shou’an, so Sherlock’s committing to it.
He does miss her clear vision and her sense of action. Her absence, though, has not provided any clarity on her – kind gesture in Constantinople. He should know how to feel, how to handle the affections of a lovely, smart young woman, but it’s simply not –
No matter. Mother wants to make a trip of London, so they do. She’s been into the city to visit Mycroft and shop and everything else more than Sherlock has in the last few months and is delighted when he deigns to pack an overnight bag for Mycroft’s, not that the elder Holmes brother is around to greet them in the midst of all of his work.
Sherlock tries not to take it personally and kisses Mother’s cheek goodbye – barely holding her back from joining him – and sets out to the coffee house. Sherlock does not interrogate Shou’an’s choice of meeting place, in the case it’s for her to overhear political chatter and plan more espionage. He’s trying to leave behind the urge to pursue mystery.
He is.
So color him surprised when Oxford’s only former faux-princess is sitting and prattling about with James Moriarty, talking about God knows what in conspiratorial whispers. They both see Sherlock at the same time, twin pairs of dark eyes on him, sharp enough to flay him to the bone.
“Your highness,” Sherlock says, trying to eliminate any stiffness from his voice as the two stand: Shou’an, with her straightbacked discipline; James, more languid. “James.”
Something sparkles in Shou’an’s gaze. “Hello, Sherlock.”
“No title for me, my lord?” teases James, nudging Sherlock’s shoulder, but no more. The weather has brought about a light brown suit that hugs close to his form, his arms.
Sherlock responds, a bit hypocritically, “I’ve been suspecting you’re actually a republican.”
“I’m not sure it’s republicanism,” James muses to Shou’an, “if you’re waiting to become king yourself. Ah, but that’ll be Paris leaving her mark on me, wouldn’t it?”
“Entertaining as ever, chaps,” Shou’an says, giving Sherlock her playful little smile as they take their seats.
“She missed us,” James says, giving Sherlock a look, accompanied by his lazy grin in turn. His easy use of us is – familiar. Disturbing. Irrelevant. Like what he had said in the mountains, on the way to Silas’ factory; like what he had said in the restaurant on that final day. Not that it matters. Not that the creeping death has risen from the ashes of Afshin. Not that –
“I didn’t realize you’d invited James, Shou’an,” says Sherlock after a beat, trying to tear his gaze away.
But in his periphery, he sees that James’ amusement only grows. Shou’an, too, tilts her head. “I didn’t,” she responds, casual but observant. “He found me earlier today.”
“Did he now,” Sherlock says with flat resignation. He nearly moves his hand to his chest to touch the key, Silas’ key, but he does not. He cannot. “How very fascinating.”
“It is, isn’t it?” James practically sings, perched in his seat like a preening nightingale. “Oh, but season your admiration, sweet prince!”
“Sherlock,” Shou’an interrupts, almost gently. “It’s good to see you.”
Sherlock sighs, resolves to give her a bit of a smile. She’s wearing the well-tailored clothes of her Oxford guise, but her hair is looser, her eyes are brighter, her cheer is easier. Clearly a weight has been lifted off her shoulders. It should be easy to look at her, Sherlock thinks, and feel something beyond his general fondness, the simple pleasure of being with her. And yet he doesn’t. He likes her terribly, enough that he couldn’t imagine her sending her to prison despite seeing her kill, despite the fact that she shot him, so it is very much a real fondness, but –
“The same to you, of course,” Sherlock says quickly, intertwining his fingers into a tight bind. “And how were your travels?”
Shou’an shakes her head. “It’s far too much work to get to this island.”
“Ah, but you’re here all the same, aren’t you?” James says merrily, enjoying himself more than strictly necessary. He flags down a waiter for drinks.
Something about it is nice. Sherlock doubts that English men his age are typically friends with masterful Chinese mercenaries and brilliant Irish university rejects, but the company strips away some of his pretenses – that, and of course the whiskey. He listens attentively to Shou’an describe the scenery of the Gansu Corridor, the stunning hills that surround her village. He clumsily attempts some (still slurred) Mandarin to practice and listens to Shou’an and James laugh at him in two-time harmony. He forgets, for a second, what has passed in the last year; instead he’s transported into the fantastically dull life of a student at an Oxford pub with two of his favored peers, wasting the afternoon away – his only concerns are his reading, his schoolwork, his exams. And it’s easy.
Then the fantasy breaks as James catches eye of someone across the coffee house, an official looking figure who he must ask about his insights on Her Majesty’s Government current relations with Holland, sir, would you have a moment? Sherlock watches, forlorn, as James pulls on a posh accent as effortlessly as shrugging on a coat on the other side of the coffee house, no doubt digging for some kernel of information or the other. Shou’an follows along, bemused.
“He does not seem that different,” Shou’an comments lightly. “Not like how you do.”
Sherlock finally glances away from James and the way a curl is falling into his face, a rare misalignment. He’s not even wondering, he realizes in the back of his head, what James really wants from that man. “What does that mean?”
“You know what it means.” Shou’an raises an elegant eyebrow. “You do not seem to be stuck chasing a tangled conspiracy, for one.”
“Well,” Sherlock says insufficiently, something about the key almost burning a hole into his chest. It does hurt him to hear her say it so simply. Is he Sherlock Holmes, he ponders, if he does not have a case? If he does not have something tangible to make himself occupied, to make himself interesting, to make himself useful? “It’s like you had said. Work in progress.”
Shou’an’s lips quirk with mirth. “That’s not what I had been referring to then, Sherlock, and you know it.”
Before he can answer, James is bustling back, looking coy as ever. He drops a handful of coins on their little table. “Next round’s on me.”
In his memory, Sherlock sees him next to the other man again: leaning in, gesturing, keeping him engaged. Hand straying to the full pockets. Typical. A jealous, craving want strays through Sherlock; the only crimes he commits in Appleton Manor are occasionally ignoring his mother and horribly hoping that his sister isn’t involved in plots. He –
“Watch and learn, princess,” James is saying to Shou’an, picking up a coin and skimming it over his knuckles. Then it’s there behind her ear, then it’s gone. Silas looms in Sherlock’s memory. The impossible made possible. The eternal reminder of how stupid he’d been. Bile rises in his throat.
“I’m going to get some air,” Sherlock says, standing abruptly. He shuffles out of the coffee house, skimming past a handful of chatty groups, bumping shoulders, straying close before emerging outside.
The streets of London don’t provide particularly good respite from the cacophony in Sherlock’s head, but he tries to control his breathing, digging his nails into his palms. He only gets a minute or two of it, though, before –
“You always have to upstage me, eh?” says James, hands tucked into his trouser pockets, facing the street. “Show me.”
Sherlock feels it, what he felt with James the first time they met in that Oxford classroom: the unbearable, brilliant feeling of being completely and totally seen. This, too, is ephemeral. He wordlessly takes a newly acquired pocket watch out of his suit jacket, handing it to James, who whistles appreciatively as he surveys it. It’s bright and shiny and gold, straight from the person of another official-looking man by the entrance. An old trick, another one for Sherlock’s collection.
“Very good,” James determines. He finally turns to Sherlock, properly, gaze arresting. “Did it feel good, taking it? Or was it more of a return to form?”
“They’re not mutually exclusive concepts,” Sherlock says, to be a bit of an ass, and so he doesn’t have to answer that it was in fact both, that it was so obvious that this was his first go at pickpocketing in a while, that he was read like an open book. Still, James’ eyes crinkle in the corners, and it’s buoying. “How did you know that Shou’an and I would be meeting?”
“Maybe I had a feeling,” James responds, beatific, handing back the watch to tuck away. “Maybe I got lucky.”
Sherlock submits to the urge to roll his eyes. “Forgive me for sincerely doubting that.”
“Ah, Sherlock, don’t worry,” says James, leaning closer. Sherlock’s pulse rises in his ears, where James’ mouth is near. Should he be waiting, he wonders absurdly, for a punch? For his back against the wall, for his blood on the stones of a Paris catacomb? “I’ll always forgive you.”
Sherlock swallows. At this distance, he can smell the woodsy cologne that James dabs onto his suit jackets, along with something curiously floral. Wildly, Shou’an – clever, graceful, adroit Shou’an – flashes in his mind’s eye. What is he supposed to feel?
“Are you so bored then,” Sherlock says, finding his voice to be level, “that this is your new game? Finding me?”
James’ dimples make an appearance. Sherlock finds, inanely, that he missed this. “Shall I stop?”
“Would you listen to me if I asked you to?” asks Sherlock, almost sincerely wondering. He hadn’t, after getting back from Constantinople, those months ago. James just – slipped away on his own accord. It was nothing. It was.
A breath, a pause, a beat. James cocks his head, as if seriously considering it. It teases a sliver of his throat out from under his collar. “Let’s not find out,” he decides. He brushes down the lapel of Sherlock’s jacket – does he imagine that passing shadow again on James’ face, or is it really there? He has not been able to trust his mind very much, after all. “Come on.”
Sherlock sets his jaw and follows James back inside without another complaint. Only afterwards does he realize that James’ hand had been dangerously close to the key, there, on Sherlock’s chest. For this evening, though, it’s all still safe and sound.
—
The issue is that after London, Sherlock begins seeing James everywhere. In the back of his mind, he’s almost surprised it didn’t happen sooner, that the specter of his first friend wouldn’t immediately loom with such weight. But there was a time after returning from Constantinople where James felt intangible, apart, removed. Now he’s been back in Sherlock’s life and seems stubborn to constantly appear in Sherlock’s periphery.
At first, it startles him: when he rides into town, when he helps Mother in the garden, when he grooms the horses. Then he slowly gets used to it: in the corner of his bedroom, by the fireplace, on the side of the road. James, James, James. A part of Sherlock is permanently drunk on the memory of stolen whiskey and the high of having a companion, an equal, a friend.
Or he’s going mad. Seeing images like how he saw Beatrice before – before. It can’t be that, though, because – well, sometimes Sherlock only sees another man with curling hair or strong brows or a square jaw and he thinks wait and it’s just someone else, which is perfectly typical, perfectly understandable. And the other times – the other times it is a wisp of James. In his college gown and cap, in his pyjamas, in his stupid constable disguise, in his mustard-yellow suit, in his shirtsleeves, in a transposition of Sherlock’s memory, overlaid on his life, bit by bit.
It’s merely his imagination, overactive as ever. Simple. He’s gotten better at disregarding it, anyway. It certainly helps that the images of James don’t speak, because really, that’s where the distraction begins.
It is.
He just has to keep busy. Going through Silas’ endless files has become more and more laborious with the warming weather, though, England even giving one of her rare bouts of sunshine upon the estate. Sherlock ultimately forsakes the latest stack of papers to wander the manor – Beatrice is here, and has been squabbling with Mother. Sherlock harbors a twisted kind of empathy for Bea: she has the unfortunate task of reliving growing pains and adolescence as a young adult. Maybe he should figure out how to be an older brother within the midst of it. Being some type of heir to Silas is, of course, utterly failing.
He bumps into Mrs. Crowle in the kitchen, who quickly brightens when she sees him. “Master Sherlock,” she says quickly, wiping her floured hands. After she makes sure he is well, she asks with uncharacteristic tentativeness, “I – could I ask a favor of you?”
“Of course, Mrs. Crowle,” Sherlock answers, drawing himself up. “Anything at all.”
Mrs. Crowle explains the story of her friend in the village whose lovely pearls, the most treasured piece of jewelry she owns, have gone mysteriously missing. The friend, Mrs. Flint, suspects her incompassionate sister-in-law snagged the necklace, but has no proof. Would Sherlock mind popping into the village to do a little – well not investigation, Master Sherlock, only a look around in case he can find the pearls? Mrs. Crowle isn’t sure the friend could pay, but –
“Mrs. Crowle,” interrupts Sherlock, pleasant as you please. “I would be delighted to help in return for nothing at all.” Mrs. Crowle nods her gratitude, shares Mrs. Flint’s address, and promises lamb for dinner next weekend.
On Sherlock’s way out, he finds Beatrice in the parlor, which has been cleared away and lined with cloth. The sunny days have brought about beautiful natural lighting, which has given Mother the perfect excuse to finally have Beatrice’s portrait done: one of the reasons for the current animosity between the Holmes women. Beatrice now stands opposite the windows, in a striking red dress with her hair in complicated plaits. Sherlock’s sister makes a good portrait subject in the way a general makes a good portrait subject: eyes blazing, mouth set, elbow provocatively akimbo. The painter does not seem to know what to do with her.
“Miss Holmes,” the painter says now, a bit hopelessly. His canvas is rather blank. “I don’t know if this is what your mother had in mind – ”
“Perhaps more consultation should’ve taken place, then,” Beatrice says coldly, “before this was orchestrated.”
Sherlock buries his amusement. “Sir,” he calls out to the artist. “Would you allow me to borrow my sister for a moment?”
How strange it is to hear his own voice say that, to say my sister. Now Sherlock is the target of Beatrice’s impressive glare. Nevertheless, he’s given her an out, and she gladly takes it, skirts swinging around her as she walks over to him. “What do you want,” she says, accusatory.
Sherlock glances over at the drapes of tarp; he sees a glimpse of James making a ridiculous pose in front of one, like the two of them had done at that photographer’s shop. Then he turns to Beatrice. “Would you like,” he begins, summoning his resolve, “to do a small investigation with me?”
Beatrice stares at him, brows creeping higher and higher on her forehead. “Has a mystery finally foiled you?”
“Oh, no, not at all, it’s only some missing pearls in the town,” Sherlock says, waving a hand. “Only because you – evidently have nothing better to do.”
Beatrice looks over her shoulder at the painter with a mighty glower before studying Sherlock a bit longer. “Fine,” she says eventually, already moving to go up to her room. “Let me go change.”
She returns down the stairs wearing trousers and with her hair wild and free, narrowing her eyes at the artist one more time before breezing out the door. She gives Sherlock a look over her shoulder, daring him to say something. Sherlock gives her a look back, conveying that he couldn’t care less. With that out of the way, they go to the horses.
“I’m rather surprised Mother didn’t want to paint you herself,” Sherlock says as they begin to make their way to town. “She had an impressive collection in the asylum. Very inventive style, too.”
Beatrice scoffs; something about its pitch and dismissiveness stirs an impression of – well. It’s not Mother. And it’s not relevant. “She’s too busy being dictatorial.”
“She used to request portraits of me every few years, all throughout her stay in the asylum,” Sherlock reminisces over the clodding of the horses, not disagreeing. “Miniatures. She always liked them better than photographs. I loathed sitting for them.”
“I remember,” Beatrice says, to Sherlock’s surprise. She clears her throat. “I remember how you would get bored so easily. As a child.”
“You weren’t much better,” Sherlock retorts. The memory of that fateful afternoon encroaches on him, a mirror of the light today, but he shuts it out. He does wonder what Beatrice’s memories are like – of that day, of their shared childhood. But it’s not like he can ask.
Beatrice’s mouth twists into a contemplative set. “Maybe not.”
“It’s a shock she waited this long for your portrait at all, really,” says Sherlock, tilting his head up to feel the full, fleeting pleasure of a sunray. “I suppose she only wants to create a sign that you’re really back.”
“I don’t need you to play mediator, Sherlock,” Beatrice says, vitriolic as ever. She retreats into her own thoughts, though, not making another comment until they get into town.
It’s a fairly straightforward mystery with a fairly straightforward suspect. Mrs. Flint is very forthcoming, though busy with housework and her four young children. Apparently her sister-in-law is a jealous, rude sort. For propriety’s sake, Sherlock and Beatrice venture a few streets down to talk to said sister-in-law, but –
“Did you see,” Beatrice says under her breath, “one of the daughters run off when she overheard us speaking?”
“You’re already a regular investigator, Bea,” Sherlock replies, glib.
The sister-in-law is evasive and impolite, but no certain thief, not yet. Sherlock and Beatrice make their way back to the Flints’ home to indulge in the time-honored detective tradition of cornering children for information. Three of Appleton’s finest youth are unhelpful except for pointing the Holmes siblings to finally find the second-eldest Flint daughter hiding in a tree.
“I didn’t mean to,” confesses little Esther tearfully. “I only wanted to play with Mummy’s necklace, then the bird took it away!”
Sherlock gives Beatrice a look: oh, dear. Beatrice gives Sherlock a look back: why did you have to get into this? Sherlock grimaces: it’s an affliction.
They help Esther down from the branches and assure her that it’ll be alright and consequently venture to find nearby magpie nests or hollows or wherever errant birds would store stolen necklaces. Craning her neck to look through thickets of trees, Beatrice waves away a couple of lazy, lurking insects. She’s gotten surprisingly invested, though maybe it’s only in comparison to getting her portrait done. It’s difficult to imagine the young woman who was running that factory in Afshin would be submitting herself to such ordeals, but Sherlock figures that it’s difficult to imagine the young man who found himself shot in Paris over a grand military conspiracy would be here, too.
“Mycroft told me the story of you and the honey bees,” Beatrice says, off-handed. She probably is living in London, then. Same as James. It’s a large city. “Apis mellifera.”
“I’m honored he’s still bitter, really,” Sherlock responds in kind, but his steps nearly stutter as the words really register. He had almost forgotten about Beatrice – allegedly, potentially – reading Darwin in front of him. And now Silas’ key lingers in his pocket, of course; switching it between jackets has become his well-worn morning habit.
He has the handkerchief, too, with its honeycomb pattern, washed and folded into a small square, hidden with his nightclothes, because he’s not supposed to be looking at it, inspecting it, pouring over it. And he hasn’t been. He hasn’t been thinking about how Beatrice knows Silas’ shipping routes, knows his properties abroad, knows his connections, knows his instincts, knows his ruthlessness. He doesn’t want to look at her like that. Some of us are humble worker bees – “Do you see Mycroft often?”
“Often enough,” Beatrice prevaricates smartly. She’d make a dastardly politician: Britain’s first lady prime minister, and likely its most ruthless to date. “Do you take up small-time village mysteries often?”
Sherlock laughs in favor of the indignity of explaining that this is the only remotely interesting thing that has happened to him in fucking ages. “Not yet.”
His eyes stray, very slightly: next to his sister is a sudden, silent James. The odd thing is that he’s walking with them – the images haven’t really moved before, not like this. It’s the most obvious giveaway that they’re false, since James is always quick to action, quick to speak. This James is oddly vivid in his dark pinstriped suit and mussed hair: how he looked at the very beginning, when they searched for the so-called missing scroll. When he’d first found himself in Sherlock’s imagination.
James looks at Sherlock, right in the eye, and raises a finger to his lips: shhh. Sherlock glances away quickly, a strange heat crawling up the back of his neck. He can smell, faintly, cologne. “I suppose Silas wouldn’t like this very much,” he finds himself saying aloud, facing straight ahead. “Wasting our talents on such things.”
Beatrice laughs, too: a surprisingly soaring thing, shedding its bitterness. “He’s not here, is he?”
Sherlock feels the key in his pocket, always the key in his pocket, but a curious lightness, too. “No,” he says, donning a smile that’s ill-fitting, a peculiar revelation. He attempts at the truth: “No, he’s not.”
“Look,” Beatrice says, pointing to the sky, a chattering noise sweeping by: a small group of black and white magpies, stark against the blue. Free and wild and surviving.
“Five for silver,” Sherlock recites, speeding up his pace. “Six for gold.”
When he turns to see Beatrice, it’s only her, only his sister, come back to play with him. Her eyes glint, true blue, and in that moment, nothing else matters at all. Seven for a secret, Sherlock thinks, feet solidly on the ground of this forest, never to be told. They both run into the trees to claim their prize.
—
The good weather, of course, has gasped its last breath by the time Sherlock returns to London. Outfitted with clothing returns for Mother, a few book orders, and some of Silas’ papers to interrogate, Sherlock’s umbrella is a poor shield against the torrential downpour. Such is the English spring he should’ve expected.
“For God’s sake,” Mycroft says, face pinched as ever, like he’s perpetually sucking on a lemon. He ushers Sherlock in quickly. “Try not to track that in, Sherlock.”
“Submit your complaints to the atmosphere, brother dear,” replies Sherlock. When he closes his umbrella, it naturally only sprays his older brother with water. “Ah, well.”
Mycroft is more resigned than anything, wiping at his face. “Go settle in, then.”
Sherlock has indeed become increasingly familiar with the guest room of Mycroft’s townhouse. When he sets his bag down, there’s the slightest twinge in his side: the ghost of his Paris gunshot wound, of Shou’an’s stray bullet. For all intents and purposes, the French doctors did a shockingly good job with mending it, but there’s still a taunting pain every so often if Sherlock stretches in one direction or gets jostled too much in a carriage or breathes wrong or something. There are good days and there are bad days. Sherlock has already made up his mind to blame this day on the torrential downpour.
He presses a light hand to his left side, there, opposite of the pocket where he keeps his key. He can’t really quite feel it in his suit, but he still knows the ridges and knots of his scar. It’s one of the few things about the – affair that is really, truly material. Like Sherlock could only trust that Beatrice is alive, that Mother is back, that Silas is gone, because it’s there on his body, his changed body. Shou’an, he thinks, would understand.
James is sitting on the bed – the image of him, rather, is sitting on the bed. He smiles at Sherlock, sunny and simple. It makes him look young. Sherlock doesn’t know the origin of this James off the top of his head, in his waistcoat and wrinkled shirt, tie on the verge of coming undone. It could be any memory, any at all.
Sherlock, habitually, smiles back for a moment. Then he’s heading downstairs to make his way through a steaming pot of tea with Mycroft, who apparently finally has an evening to himself (which has, of course, been consequently interrupted). Sadly for Sherlock’s whims, his brother is not particularly forthcoming with state secrets. To make matters worse, the guilt of Silas’ betrayal and Malik’s formula continues to hang over him like a stormcloud. Sherlock understands, of course, but it does make the rare times he actually gets to see Mycroft a proper bore.
“I heard that you and Beatrice had a mystery,” Mycroft says once they’ve exhausted the topics of weather and newspaper headline politics and Mother’s latest whims.
“Thieving magpies, tale as old as time,” Sherlock says, blasé. “Do you see her often?”
“Often enough,” replies Mycroft; Sherlock is seized with the grim image of his brother running for Parliament. Luckily, that would be too public-facing for Mycroft’s favored meddling manners. “I can’t say it surprises me that you don’t.”
Sherlock looks up from the depths of his teacup, the last dregs refusing to reveal any new truths. “What does that mean?”
Mycroft sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s like magnets,” he explains with a little gesture, not indulging in eye contact. “When they have the same poles. You’re both so horribly similar. It makes it difficult.”
“Well,” Sherlock says. His whole body feels stiff and wooden, like he’s become a toy. Heavy and numb, lugged around all over again. “It’s what Father intended for us, I suppose. Heirs.”
He doesn’t really mean to say it. He had liked that day thoroughly, his own adventure with Beatrice, as juvenile as it had been, but – but. He’d still seen it, like always: the glimmer of his father in her, and he suspects it was mirrored. Again and again.
Mycroft’s smile is bare, mournful. “I suppose,” he echoes, far away. You think you would have become the man you have, had you not been tested in the fire? “Have his notes been particularly illuminating?”
Now there’s something sideways about his gaze, nearly accusatory. Sherlock scoffs. He’s grown past reaching for the key, he really has, but the instinct still lives within him. The desire. The need to see it, to feel it, to hold it, to let its teeth dig into his palms and let him feel alive, to tease him with another secret, waiting for him. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I don’t mean anything by it, Sherlock,” Mycroft says, almost too gently. It’s revolting. “Brother dear. I only don’t want us all to go through that again.”
Sherlock swallows. Of course – of course he feels the same. Even if there was a net good: Mother freed, Beatrice returned, Silas’ truths revealed, and somehow Sherlock left with two whole friends, strange and passing as they are. Even if Sherlock would do it over and over again, every minute. Even if Sherlock knows he’s not meant for being an amateur archivist, not meant for being shut in the estate, not meant for the life he currently has twisted himself to lead.
“Of course,” he voices finally, skin crawling. “Of course. Brother dear.”
Mycroft inclines his head in a way that’s so painfully grateful. It’s not like Sherlock enjoys thinking about it: about the formula, about the dying man in the glass cage in Paris, about a gun pointed at him, about the magnitude of destruction he now knows is possible, about the fact that the remains of this creeping death live with his first friend and his sister, about the cliffside and the black lake, about the recordings of his mother, about how his father had grabbed onto him before killing himself. About how tight the embrace had been.
Still, Mycroft taps the edge of his teacup anxiously, and a spark of temper lights itself up in Sherlock’s chest; juvenile again, not unlike when he’d be disciplined in one of his boarding schools. Hasn’t he tried? Hasn’t he cut himself into something orderly after years of finding it impossible, hasn’t he wanted his family to be together when it seemed futile, when it seems futile? Is he irrevocably wrapped in the wrong direction? Is he prolonging the inevitable? Evidently that’s what fucking Mycroft thinks.
Sherlock brushes over the lapel of his suit jacket, hand straying towards the faintest outline of his key. He careens. “There are files of Silas’ I need to recover from Oxford,” he finds himself saying. “Old experiments. I can show you, it’s all rather dull. Will the constabulary arrest me on sight if I go to the library to look through records?”
Mycroft blinks before shaking his head. “I imagine it wouldn’t be very legitimate,” he says eventually. “Unless you get into trouble.”
Sherlock makes sure that Mycroft sees how completely and totally unamused he is. He’s beginning to remember exactly why it’s better for the Foreign Ministry to keep his brother ensnared. “I resent the implication.”
“Forgive me,” Mycroft replies dryly, “for not wanting to see you return to prison drabbery.”
Sherlock’s eyes roll of arguably their own accord. “I’ll go in the morning, then,” he says regardless, without room for argument. There’s a flash of James in the corner with his easy smile again, like he’d always been there, something anticipatory. Sherlock feels the weight of it. His own body, lying in wait.
—
Sherlock didn’t even lie, not this time; remnants of Silas’ work are indeed scattered somewhere in Oxford. But as his carriage braves the slate Saturday morning, Sherlock knows that he doesn’t really care, not today. He doesn’t even know what he seeks, exactly – it’s frightening and nonsensical. He only – he wants to know something. To have it, to hold it, to grasp onto some remnant of before, before –
The library of his former college appointment is fairly scarce. Sherlock wanders the stacks and shelves he used to tidy and hide between, when he’d steal minutes to skim volumes, fingers soon becoming criss-crossed with paper cuts. Nostalgia may color his view, but he recalls being a scout almost fondly. If anything, it was interesting. Few things seem to be, these days, for him.
In a corner, he looks over a thick entomological copy about the Great French Wine Blight before moving on. As he strolls out, there’s an image of James at a small table, head bowed as he writes away next to a stack of books. It’s funny, really; James studied, but never prodigiously, as his favored after-class spot was the pub. Yet this memory – the very first of James that Sherlock has seen since he arrived at Oxford this morning – is shockingly vivid: the focus in James’ dark eyes, the scritch-scratch of his furiously scrawling pencil, the jut of his lip in thought, the way that the bare sunlight from a nearby window falls on his brow –
“James,” Sherlock says aloud.
Immediately, James looks up, like a marionette being yanked around with a string. He relaxes, though, the second he sees Sherlock, an enormous grin appearing on his face instead. “Ah, finally,” he says gleefully. “A porter!”
“Scout,” corrects Sherlock flatly, habitually, but there’s something fighting in his chest, enough that for a moment, he can ignore how quickly James tidies his papers and closes up his books. But only for a moment. Only – “Formerly. You’re not – ”
“Oh, no,” James answers, laughing to himself. “God, could you imagine? No, they’d never let me back as a student. Not that I’d want it, anyway. No, I’m here on research orders from the boss. What’s it for you?”
“Personal expeditions,” Sherlock evades, not quite living up to his siblings’ examples.
Still, James seems to enjoy the answer, eyes crinkled and lining his face with mirth. “Curiosity, eh?”
“The greatest virtue,” Sherlock says; in the back of his head, he thinks it only sounds a bit like Silas.
“Except,” James agrees, “if you’re a cat.”
Sherlock’s standing over him, now, hand braced on the edge of the table. James is unphased, only tilting his chin up and studying Sherlock, gaze dragging over him in a way that feels terribly deliberate. Like he’s so easy to understand, like there’s something written across his fucking face.
James stands, and for a skipping moment, he’s nearly nose-to-nose with Sherlock. The warmth of him, the smell of him, the force of him is there, right there – Paris, gunshots, blood, a hand on Sherlock’s side. Then he’s striding towards something else entirely, chocolate-brown suit tailored to him like a second skin. “Did you see?” he asks over his shoulder.
Sherlock, stupidly, lags behind a second until his legs get the message to move, to follow. It ends up being to a very familiar spot indeed: a glass case with a piece of The Art of War locked inside, sat on top of a very normal, most likely non-explosive cabinet. The scroll has been freed from its case, spread out to view underneath the glass. Sherlock exhales a sound of disbelief, brushing his fingers over the barrier, wistful despite himself.
“The real princess went straight back to China after her whole ordeal,” James says conversationally as Sherlock studies the writing. “Our Shou’an was very amused when I told her it was still here, though.”
Sherlock looks up at him, leaning on the glass, loose and leisurely. “Our?” he repeats, unimpressed. He’s shelving the horrifying prospect of whatever Shou’an and James talk about for later. Along with however James – knows that. The books, the papers, James and Shou’an in the exploding mine together, I took it for us –
“Well, come on now, Shirley,” James murmurs, flashing his dimples. “We can share, can’t we?”
“I’ll have to let her know that you talk about her like that,” replies Sherlock, probably a little too imperiously. What is he supposed to feel?
“Fine, then,” James says, still strangely, strangely soft. “You can be our Sherlock.”
When Sherlock turns to see him, they’ve been transposed into another day, the light adjusting around them to a different time. The memory that’s been encroaching on Sherlock this entire time: he watches himself run into the library with a bloody nose, James next to him with a bottle of whiskey, both of them giddy with the energy of a fight, a chase, a steal.
“Ah,” says James, smile sticking on, watching past-Sherlock climb onto the wooden display, swinging on his feet. “This, I do miss.”
“The romps of our youth?” Sherlock says ironically. It’s been, of course, barely six months since this day. “I thought you said you didn’t regret losing it.”
Inadvertently, he’s stumbled into the topic of their last conversation. This other memory holds, though. James cants his head, something intense about his gaze. “Not that, no,” he says, low. He reaches over the short distance to tap Sherlock’s temple: once, twice. “This. Being in here.”
Something crawls up Sherlock’s neck, hot and bizarre. He has the nonsensical, random thought that such a statement would’ve never escaped James’ mouth around Shou’an. “Oh. I see.”
Their former selves come barrelling towards the glass, the scrolls now tucked away. “Do you remember?” muses James, paying them no mind, “the shot you took?”
Sherlock doesn’t dare blink. “What?”
“The shot, Sherlock,” James says, almost encouraging. Sherlock forgot this tone of his, the one that coaxes – or rather wrestles – out a deduction from him, but it kicks a sudden instinct into his mind, holding him at attention. Or some kind of gunpoint. “For me. In Constantinople, in the compound. Do you remember?”
The sun-soaked marble of Constantinople, the way the air would hang sweeter by the sea. The last place Sherlock’s father lived. Mycroft coming back. Shou’an beside him with her careful grin. Gunshots, gunshots, gunshots. James sliding across the stone floor in his mustard suit. Sherlock’s pistol, tremulous in his hands. The guard charging at James, the sudden instinct in Sherlock’s aim –
“There you go,” James says, standing in the midst of the fray as it all freezes, casual as anything. And Sherlock’s beside him. “You’ve got it.”
“Why this?” Sherlock asks, voice remote before he tries to steal it back.
“Isn’t it obvious?” responds James unhelpfully, strolling over to study past-Sherlock, frozen in time, gun held slack and unsure. His former self looks stupidly young, Sherlock thinks with some revulsion, stupidly young and unsure. “Maybe not. I only wanted to see it again. I do remember it so fondly.”
“A shoot-out is a fond memory?” Sherlock repeats with something incredulous. But he knows in his heart – his stupid, stupid heart – that for James, it would be. This James, hiding sheafs of papers and holding himself ready and returning after months with something to prove again, de novo, always something to prove. Sherlock feels it, light bouncing to create a reflection –
“When I met you, Sherlock,” James says, a laugh sneaking its way around his words, “you could barely throw a fuckin’ punch. And then here, you could’ve killed this man.”
“It was only in the leg,” Sherlock says inanely, here by his victim’s side – writhing in pain, yes, moving and moving and moving. Something thunders in his ears like a warning, like Shou’an teetering off the bell tower: Still a boy!
“Look at you,” James appraises, a deranged approval in his uncharacteristic quietness. “You haven’t even thought of it since.”
Sherlock stares at him, making no effort to hide his near-gape. The knife to the throat, the shot to the abdomen is, of course, that James is right about this, of all things. “You don’t know that.”
James is only magnanimous as he stands up straight, opening his arms. It’s disturbingly theatrical. “Don’t I know you? Same as you know me?”
A breath, a pause, a beat. Sherlock feels his pulse in his throat, solid and sure as the hammer of a gun as he crosses the remnants of the compound, this span of imagination. “Honestly,” he says, hearing his voice go chilly, “I’m entirely not sure. I haven’t seen you in quite some time, James.”
And here – maybe it’s only in Sherlock’s imagination, maybe it’s another image he’s pretending to see, but he swears it: the transient shadow on James’ face, the crack in his armor. Maybe Sherlock just wants it, just wants –
“Fine, then, enough of this,” James says; somehow, the world around them bends to the wave of his hand and it’s Oxford again on this gloomy day. Sherlock doesn’t get a single breath to consider whatever that implies – he’s now face-to-face with his first friend on solid ground. “Here’s another game for you, since you’re wanting it so badly. Why am I here?”
“James,” Sherlock says on an exasperated exhale, hands braced on the glass case, cold under his touch. Still, it wheedles out flashes behind his eyelids, perfunctory: the books about quadratics back on the desk, the hastily hidden paper, the convenient trip James took into Sherlock’s room, the way James had sought out Shou’an. Because of course Sherlock knows, has known, still known, same as Constantinople.
He almost loathes himself for it, his need to have to see it all, but it’s – death in the sky – Beatrice hidden away for years and years – Shou’an’s dead village – gas spreading underground in Paris – It would be freedom for us, Sherlock, we could do whatever we want – I always knew you loved me, my boy – Everything by design – I do hope you find a way to put that beautiful mind of yours to good use – Surely, by now –
It really is the Constantinople restaurant all over again, except now Sherlock’s on the fucking defensive. He knows – of course he does. It’s his own fault for wanting a companion for a little longer, for trying to lengthen the lifespan of something destined to die young, immortalized in memory behind glass.
James, growing jittery, steps closer. The way he leans in, the wide span of his gait – it’s how Sherlock has seen James stride through the world a dozen times, a hundred: forcing his way to the front, subverting every obstacle with the force of his charm and the white-star knuckles of his fists and the hammer of his pistol.
There had been a moment, in Paris, before the gunshots, that Sherlock thinks about less; when James didn’t look at him in the tunnels, spellbound by the demonstration of brutality, of warfare, of the nerve agent. When he’d slipped to the front without a word to watch death, the simple trick: Et voilà.
It’s infallibly egotistical, but – it’s the only time in Sherlock’s memory that James had truly ignored him, that something else had captured his focus entirely. There was the horror at the front of the room in that glass cage, and there was something else in Sherlock’s chest: the inverse of what he felt in that first, fateful Oxford classroom. He had been tossed aside for cruelty. And then after Constantinople, after James had the formula, he left Sherlock again.
But, now, but now – James is here, boring down on him. “Say it, Sherlock.”
It really does infuriate Sherlock, in an unnameable and vague way, how composed James is – Shou’an was wrong, he has changed himself somehow, recomposed himself anew. He had been shaken before, at the end of it all, in Constantinople. Sherlock had shaken him. The key, the key, the key. It was Sherlock’s pride that spoke for him at that table. Some proof that he still had a hand, a piece of intrigue. And here he is, fucking floundering. James must be a mirror of this, too, though, with his own secret close to his chest. He must be, he must –
“You and I both know it’s the formula,” Sherlock finally says, nearly prosaic. Is this all that’s left for them? This dance? “Still. I do wish you’d find a new pursuit.”
James smiles, though, like some kind of reward. “You should understand how it feels,” he says, which is an answer in and of itself. “To have something rattling around your head, needing to be solved. Begging for it.”
The horrible indignity of him being correct again, again. To know your enemy, so on and so forth. Enemy? Sherlock replies, tightly, “I manage to carry on.”
James rolls his eyes, stepping back in his rank disbelief. “All of your English bullshit,” he says, something more vicious about it than ordinary, voice finally inching upwards. Or maybe Shou’an was right after all. “And your holier than thou talk. You manage, do you? Your manage your father’s money, and experiments, and his voice in your head – ”
“Stop,” hisses Sherlock, catching alight. The cliff, the guns, the blood, the lake – “Enough. This isn’t like you.”
“Isn’t like me?” repeats James, dumbfounded, punctuated with a terse, terrible laugh. “Isn’t like me? Sherlock, if it wasn’t for me, you’d still be cuddled up in his fuckin’ arms, all docile and drugged and detoothed.”
Sherlock swings first. James dodges, baring his teeth. It’s not like when they fought in the backroom of the theater, or even in Sherlock’s room: here, they grapple in the cloistered space, forced close and unrefined, a twisted sort of embrace. James’ hands fist in Sherlock’s shirt, swinging him away from the glass case, Sherlock tries to dig his elbow into James’ side. James tries to bring his knee up, Sherlock pushes him away for a bare, brief beat. Punch, dodge, step, dodge, punch, step, dodge, shove –
“What would Shou’an say,” Sherlock gasps, “about you looking for the drug that ransacked her homeland and her people to make yourself rich?”
“What would Beatrice say,” James snarls, “about you forsaking everything left for your hands?”
James hands are a vice grip on Sherlock’s shoulders until he shoves again, hard, rocking Sherlock backwards. He ends up on the floor, but he brings James with him with a pull on his jacket, leaving the other boy to practically straddle Sherlock’s hips. The warmth of him, the smell of him, the force of him – the cataclysmic meteor of him barreling once more into Sherlock’s life. For a moment, the two of them slide sideways into Paris, the tunnels, the echoing screams, the throes of people running, the gunshot wound –
“No!” spits James, immediately catching on. Again, it somehow bends to his command and vanishes. “No, not here!”
Once more: Oxford, the library, James’ breath a caress on Sherlock’s face. “You are here, James,” Sherlock says, fighting through the yammering of his heart and the struggle of his lungs and the renewed pain in his side, “because you have no fucking home of your own, and this is all you can claw for.”
For a moment, James’ face is frozen, an indiscernible mask terrifying in its blankness. Then, even worse: he smiles, splitting him open. “Jesus, look at you,” he marvels, barking another laugh – higher, giddier. He’s really smiling. He’s really fucking smiling. “At least you’re fuckin’ alive again.”
He pats his hand briefly on Sherlock’s cheek – gentle, too gentle. Something dangerous is shining in his eyes, capricious and keen. Sherlock stares, his pulse jumping in his throat, his ear, his thigh. We are not above nature. The final truth, the worst one: he’s awake with a rush in his blood he hasn’t felt since – the compound? The gun in his hand, the guard on the ground, the precipice of something greater nipping at his heels? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t fucking know anything, just that whatever this is – it’s intoxicating, awful, necessary, a perfect miracle compared to the memories of James, a saving grace from the sheer boredom of his life. He forgot it could be like this. He forgot –
James stands. Then, somehow, he offers Sherlock a hand up. Even worse, Sherlock dizzily takes it, hauling himself up and then – at least – keeping an arm’s length distance. Silence stretches like a stain, like the blood beading on Sherlock’s nostrils. He hadn’t even realized it was there until he brings a finger to it, beholding the shock of carmine.
“A poison needs its antidote,” James says finally, voice ironed out into something near-presentable. He’s blood-free, bastard, though there’s a pink bloom on his jaw. He keeps studying Sherlock, almost anticipatory, his back to the glass case as he gestures. “Thesis, antithesis.”
“I loathe to imagine whatever the synthesis is,” says Sherlock against his better instincts. His dare is rewarded with James scoffing in amusement. It’s nearly encouraging enough for him to try, “Aren’t there other ways to make yourself rich besides the spoils of Pandora’s Box?”
“Some of us have to make our own luck without manors and mothers,” James bites back, acerbic and unrepentant. His too-long curls are a glorious mess, a halo around his head. Of course he finds a way to stumble into the topic of Sherlock’s mother. “You know it’s not as simple as your high-and-mighty ethics try to dictate.”
Oh, Sherlock, don’t be so simple. The blood dries and flakes on Sherlock’s nail as he presses his palm to his tender abdomen, testing the extent of pain – at least it’s returning to its standard throb. Damned spots and all. Father, Silas, liar, killer, holding his rain-soaked blistered second son in his arms. Back here again: James digging around for vulnerabilities and clawing them out.
“I only believe,” Sherlock says, shutting his eyes to ward off confidential Constantinople on that night, “that you’re better than whatever this is.”
“I only believe,” James echoes, mocking, crossing the divide to be close again when Sherlock opens his eyes, “you want to unravel this as much as I do.”
He stops himself, though, inhaling, exhaling, fighting to regain a semblance of control. Suddenly it’s that soft tone, again, the careful one: “But I had meant it.” His knuckles, featherlight on Sherlock’s collar, the tease of cologne. “I took it for us. For Christ’s sake, I’ll say it over and over until you understand. You don’t think someone’s racing to recreate the formula? You don’t think that we’re the best equipped to solve it?”
“I don’t know,” Sherlock says; it spills out of him, rash and stupid like most of his decisions when James is concerned. An incredible weariness is beginning to descend on his shoulders, the adrenaline fading away; it’s just the cloistering dreams of still bodies and butterflies behind glass and exploding mines and that last day before everything went wrong. After everything, it’s that last day, again and again. And still, there’s a yearning in his gut for the feeling again, for – “I don’t know. Maybe I only think you want the key.”
James smiles, like always, tilting his head. “If I wanted that, I could’ve gotten it,” he says, hand moving to Sherlock’s chest, opposite his heart. “But I didn’t. Don’t you wonder why? Huh, Sherlock?”
“I wonder,” says Sherlock, James’ touch so feverish that he can feel it as though they were skin-to-skin, “if this has become more than a game of prizes for you. James.”
“I had told you,” says James, gripping at the fabric of Sherlock’s suit again, hand becoming a pale fist, “that because lives are at stake, we must win. You know I’m right. You’ve always known.”
“You didn’t take the key because you want me,” Sherlock says, pulling in a breath that quivers, something that James must feel reverberating. Paris and the dark. “You can’t play your game without me. Or my mind. Or however you narrate it to yourself.”
“Ah, don’t be so cold,” James chides, another kind of answer. As if now he somehow couldn’t lie. As if he couldn’t really find some other mind as broken as Sherlock’s as a substitute for his chase. “A man’s not allowed to miss adventure?”
“Adventure and games,” says Sherlock, unable to hide his disdain; the mountains on the way to Afshin all over again. The ruthlessness of ambition in the air. He tells himself that he doesn’t understand it. “Didn’t you say it was about saving lives, just now?”
James has the nerve to lean closer, to Sherlock’s ear. “See, that’s why I need you,” he whispers. “Sweet princes and noble hearts and all.”
He’s so warm, so horrifyingly warm. Sherlock draws back, finally, though there’s some part of him still stuck chasing, keening. He runs a precarious hand down his crumpled jacket, making himself look in James’ eyes, pupils cavernous and pitch-black. “You really believe that?”
Does the shadow pass over James’ face, or does Sherlock transpose it over? Is it Oxford today around them, or Oxford before? How am I supposed to feel? “If it’s the truth,” James says, so very quietly, “does it matter?”
“However improbable,” Sherlock says; it’s fitting, it’s all terribly fitting, cyclical and clean like a storybook. The likeliest explanation, insists a ghost of Shou’an’s voice in the back of his mind, dignified even on the prison floor. “You talk about doing this like it’s inevitable.”
“I told you,” James says, unyielding. The gun, the compound, the blood, the anticipation on the horizon. “It’s there, waiting to be solved. It needs to be solved, you know that. It’ll be them or us, Sherlock.”
Sherlock brushes his thumb over his lower lip, the taste of iron acute. “Or you.”
A perfect, simple smile, removed from its context. “Or us.”
Sherlock glances away, finally, foolishly unable to see it again, unable to look into the glare of the sun, the star he somehow must discipline from burning the entire world. “I need to think about it,” he says, something burning in his palms.
He can still see James’ teeth in his periphery. “Fine,” he says easily, the only damn thing he’s let go without comment. “I’ll be back in London. The coffee house where we met Shou’an, you’ll find me there.”
He leaves Sherlock cold, blood still crusted on his nose like a rare geode; he leaves Sherlock to slowly take the key out of inner pocket to look at it, only to look at it. It’s warm in a strange way that makes it feel nearly malleable, nearly soft. Like he could bend it to his will and craft something entirely new and beautiful, a different tool for a different world.
He should find Shou’an, he thinks; one last, desperate urge. He should find Shou’an and warn her and hope she can find her way back before it’s too late to – be true and clear in the way only she can. Would James hurt – Sherlock cannot even say for sure. The world, bursting at the seams, upside down, all nonsensical.
The key returns, of course, to his inner pocket, to stay with him, unchanged. Maybe, Sherlock thinks with the pressure of a chokehold, it really couldn’t be anyone else. It would have to be him and James, racing towards the edge of the known world, the only ones built for contours of this game his father left him. It lingers on the corner of his mind, vivid as a sunlit memory as he trudges on.
—
The rain follows Sherlock back home and looms throughout the week, his main companion. One morning of pitter-patter, he awakes from a deep, dreamless sleep, body odd and heavy. Still, he rouses himself, looking through his closet. When he shaves his face, his razor is solid in his hand. An undefined blade, bound only by its potential.
In the corridor is Beatrice, umber riding habit betraying that she must’ve arrived this morning. She inclines her head in acknowledgement, hair falling around her face – Sherlock would dare say that it’s civil.
“Bea,” he says, and it is a rather childish comfort to see her, sometimes – to remember that she’s truly back, as solid as the scar on his side. Or the key.
“Shirley,” she returns, and there might even be a bit of a smile.
Sherlock remembers, suddenly, how small she was as a child; they’re barely a year apart. He was always afraid to hold her. She cannot know, he thinks, the one substantial thing that comes through the haze. He cannot let her know, as much as it’d seem like forsaking her, usurping her again. He cannot let her return back to it, back to what she knows best, Silas’ ghost breathing down her neck.
He says instead, “Will you join us for breakfast?”
“In a moment,” Beatrice allows. If she’s resolved her arguments with Mother is evidently to be determined. Her second go at adolescence. Her right to worry only about this.
Sherlock accepts it anyway and descends the stairs to greet Mother at the table, her face lighting up as he sits – he’s been flighty since getting back from Oxford, passing through each room. But he sits with her and listens to her chatter for a minute or two: the plants are braving the showers, the tailor is coming by, the birds are making a nest right by her window.
At the first lull, Sherlock draws himself up, a fighter in the yard. “I think I may stay in London for a little bit,” he says. “James has called me to work on some project of his.”
A breath of nothing, a pause beyond time. Then Mother smiles in surprise, dazzling and luminescent like the small pearls she wears on her ears. “Oh, darling, how wonderful,” she says, leaning over the table to take Sherlock’s hand. “I know how you’ve missed him. It’ll be so good for you to have something else to do besides look through all those papers.”
Sherlock exhales shortly. His eyes stray, for a moment, to the other side of the table. No one is there, no one at all. Only the weight on his shoulder, the key in his pocket. “Yes,” he says. He holds his breath for the plunge. “Yes, Mother, I think so too.”