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Beatrice doesn’t grow out of playing with dolls so much as the interest is abruptly crushed into a thousand pieces in the exact moment that the same fate is befalling Sally’s porcelain head beneath the weight of Sherlock’s foot.
Sherlock doesn’t mean to do it, of course. Her brother is never cross or unfair – or god forbid cruel – with her with anything resembling intent. It always seems to happen accidentally, usually when Sherlock is preoccupied with some new bauble or area of interest and his attention begins to prioritize that over her. He doesn’t mean to step on Sally’s head when he’s rushing into Beatrice’s room to show her something or another and Beatrice shouldn’t have left Sally on the floor to begin with, but in the moment that Beatrice hears the crunch and takes in the shudder of realization on Sherlock’s face as he comes to an abrupt halt, that doesn’t much seem to matter. The outrage that ignites in her chest is too hot and there’s a scream on the tip of her tongue that’s just yearning to come out.
Sherlock must see it because it’s not a moment later that Beatrice is in his arms and he has a palm pressed hard over her mouth.
An indignant squawk tries to escape Beatrice, but it’s muffled. She jerks in Sherlock’s grip and it’s useless. Sherlock holds fast and shushes her.
“I’m sorry,” he rushes out. “I’m so, so –“
He cries out when she bites his palm but to Beatrice’s utter disappointment, Sherlock doesn’t let go.
“That hurt,” he accuses and gives her a wounded look before he blinks and remembers he has just obliterated the best doll their father has ever given her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to! Don’t tell mummy. I swear I’ll make it up to you.”
How, Beatrice wants to demand but can only manage to do so with a look.
Her brother interprets her glare as easily as if she’d spoken aloud.
“I can be your doll,” Sherlock declares. The ridiculousness of the statement strikes him belatedly and he falters, but he shakes it off with remarkable speed. Sherlock stands up straighter, chin raising. “I’ll follow your instruction to the letter. Just tell me what game you were playing with her and I will take her role.”
He hesitates a moment before he moves his palm from her mouth. Beatrice considers yelling out for their mother anyway – but she doesn’t, of course. Sherlock’s idea thrills her and if she tells their mother anything, it’ll all be ruined. Sherlock will be pouting the rest of the evening if not the remainder of the week. He’ll certainly not agree to this game again.
Still – Sally was her favorite.
“I was playing a wedding game,” Beatrice lies. “Sally was to be the bride.”
“Oh,” Sherlock says. He pauses, then presses. “And the groom?”
“Mr. Fulhame, of course.” The stuffed bear that Sherlock gave her last Christmas. “But obviously he has no desire to marry the boy who broke his bride’s head, so you’ll have to find someone else. Do you think Mycroft is still busy with that essay he’s writing?”
Sherlock sputters, taken aback. “Mycroft?”
Beatrice raises her chin. “Unless you want me to ask mummy to play.”
As it turns out, Mycroft is still busy with his essay but Sherlock is adept at leading him astray. Mycroft looks a bit like he’s been marched to the gallows when he settles on the floor of Beatrice’s room with Beatrice and Sherlock, but he lets Beatrice take his hand and put it over Sherlock’s and his mouth twitches with poorly suppressed mirth when Beatrice places an absurdly tiny veil – originally worn by Sally in the wedding game Beatrice played weeks ago – atop Sherlock’s head. He puts up with Beatrice ‘marrying’ them, schooling his features into something appropriately solemn. He even recites some passably touching vows when Beatrice prompts him which spurs Sherlock to be even more purple in his own declarations of til death do they part.
It’s only when they get to the end of it, when Beatrice announces –
“And you may now kiss the bride.”
– that Mycroft balks and Sherlock laughs like it’s a grand joke.
“Sister dear,” Mycroft begins, but Beatrice recognizes his tone and she isn’t having it.
“You said you’d play,” Beatrice reminds Mycroft. “The wedding isn’t official if you don’t kiss.”
“I don’t think that’s the legal statute, actually,” Mycroft starts. “In fact –“
But Sherlock, still laughing, leans over and grabs him by the face to press a quick kiss to his lips.
It barely lasts for more than a second – a blink and Beatrice could have missed it – but it sparks something inside her, something that keeps sparking as Mycroft’s features twist with some emotion Beatrice can’t interpret and Sherlock keeps smiling. Her mind replays the moment – again and again.
“There, brother dear,” Sherlock says. “We’re husband and wife now. Are you happy, Bea?”
“Not at all,” Beatrice says, “if that’s what you call a kiss. Do it again.”
Sherlock’s smile wobbles with unsurety. His eyes cut across to Mycroft whose own gaze is directed at the ceiling as though he is praying for strength.
“As we must,” Mycroft mutters, before he looks away from the ceiling and kisses Sherlock on the mouth.
A small noise escapes Sherlock and Beatrice watches with keen eyes as his mouth parts slightly. Mycroft makes a sound in response, moving his own lips over Sherlock’s.
The kiss lingers.
They both look a bit dazed and perturbed when they pull back.
“Better?” Mycroft asks, but for all the question is directed at Beatrice, it’s Sherlock he’s looking at. His eyes rove over Sherlock’s face, looking for any sign of upset.
But there’s none there. Beatrice stares at Sherlock, the red high in his cheeks, the awkward tilt of his lips. She knows what Sherlock looks like when he’s angry or sad or any number of emotions and this is none of those.
It makes it easier for Beatrice to swallow down her own doubt, her own unsurety about this game.
It makes it far easier for her to lie.
“No,” she says. “Do it again.”
*
It’s only a few days later that she’ll be gone. Away from her parents, away from her brothers, away from her home. There are plenty of dolls where Beatrice ends up and when her mind seems far too loud she finds a certain peace in putting them on the floor, putting her boot covered foot over their heads, and seeing exactly how much pressure it takes before they break.
Beatrice can’t find it in herself to feel any remorse. She misses her mother. She misses her father. But more than them, she misses her brothers terribly. There’s no doll that can hold a candle to Mycroft or Sherlock. There’s no game worth playing that doesn’t involve them. She tells herself that her method of acting out is benign. She longs to burn the house to the ground, to take something sharp and cut up the curtains and stab holes in the walls. To run all the way back to Appleton and see for herself if it was ever real or if the entire house and everyone who ever lived in it was just a dream.
The longing never goes away. Not ever.
The years pass. The setting changes. Beatrice gets her father back, but it’s hardly enough. She tries to make it enough, but she can’t. His attention feels too hard to earn even as she’s desperately grasping for it and his love too precarious, somehow all the more for how often he declares his esteem. No matter how hard Beatrice tries, there’s still that longing in her for something else – something more secure. The desire to be back home. Back with her mother no matter what her father says about her. Back with her brothers, back to sitting on the floor together watching them kiss, so certain that there could never be three people as close in the world as they are to one another.
Beatrice wants and she wants and she wants and it’s always the same thing. The shape of her desire becomes more fleshed out as she grows older, but it never changes. It’s always her family. Always and always and forever.
Getting them back only feels like an inevitability and Silas going over that cliff only the necessary price to be given in exchange.
*
Her bedroom at Appleton is completely unchanged. The furniture, the artwork, the blankets on the bed – it’s all exactly as Beatrice left it. She drifts through the room, fingers grazing over this thing and that, feeling all at once at home and out of place.
Sally still sits on her bed, her porcelain face marred by a spider’s web of cracks. Sherlock had only finished putting her back together the night before their father had her spirited away. He’d been working on it day and night, he told her when he gave Sally back.
“I’d hate for Mr. Fulhame to stay a widow,” he said, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head.
Beatrice was touched.
The sight of Sally – and the memory – has warmth blossoming in Beatrice’s chest now. It’s still there when she turns around and goes to join her brothers where they sit on the floor.
“Rather unbecoming, brother dear,” Mycroft remarked when Sherlock ignored the nearby chairs to lower himself to the carpet, but Sherlock was unbothered.
“Only engaging in a bit of nostalgia, brother dear,” Sherlock replied. “Nothing unbecoming about that.”
Mycroft made a doubtful noise, but he joined Sherlock anyway, groaning about how his back would ache in the morning all the while. He didn’t refuse when Sherlock passed the bottle of wine they’d pilfered from Silas’ collection over to him, however, and he barely bemoaned the uncivilized nature of not having a glass to drink from before he took a swig.
Beatrice sits across from them, her back pressed against the bedpost. Deja vu washes over her – a strange, dizzying sensation. Everything is the same, but it’s different. The room is unchanged, but at the same time so much smaller than before. Beatrice can’t help but liken herself to a doll that’s outgrown its playhouse. And for all that she’s been observing her brothers for weeks already and interacting with them for nearly as long, it’s still so odd to look at them and think on the last time they saw one another. Then they were only boys and now they’re men. Taller than ever, broad in the shoulders – and Mycroft with a mustache.
Beatrice wonders suddenly if it would tickle to kiss him and heat flushes over her body.
She considers ignoring it – she knows she should – but good sense isn’t nearly as strong as the weight of all the years she’s gone without.
“Do you remember the wedding game we played before we were separated?” Beatrice asks.
Separated seems like such a benign word to describe their reality, but there’s no helping it. Beatrice doesn’t need to elaborate, she knows they understand. Mycroft’s eyes crinkle and his smile becomes tight at the edge while Sherlock’s mouth tilts up into a hesitant little smile of his own.
“Speaking of nostalgia,” Sherlock says.
“Or we could not speak of it,” Mycroft cuts in. His gaze darts from Beatrice to Sherlock then back again – before returning to Sherlock, clearly having identified him as the most likely of them to turn the scene into something it shouldn’t become.
It’s nearly a pity, Beatrice thinks, how little he knows her now.
“I don’t see why not,” Beatrice says, causing Mycroft’s attention to snap back to her. Everything in his expression is a plea for her to stop while she’s ahead, but she pretends she doesn’t see it and gives him her softest, most fragile smile. “You know, it’s been one of my fondest memories.”
Something falters in Mycroft’s face – a small bit of resistance chipping away.
“Be that as it may, it was wholly inappropriate of us,” Mycroft says, though not unkindly. “Or of me, rather. I’m the eldest. I never should have…”
He trails off, swallows hard and looks away.
Beatrice’s eyes drift from him to Sherlock. She’s unsurprised to find Sherlock already looking at her.
A beat passes and some understanding passes between them.
“I didn’t mind,” Sherlock says, still holding Beatrice’s gaze. “You weren’t that poor a kisser, Mycroft. There’s no need to be so down on yourself.”
Mycroft makes a strangled noise and sends Sherlock an aghast look. “Sherlock –“
“Still,” Sherlock goes on, “it’s been years. You’ve only become more tedious and the company you keep no more agreeable. It’s fully possible your technique has atrophied into something truly horrendous.”
“It’s certainly a question worthy of investigation,” Beatrice adds.
“Certainly, sister dear,” Sherlock agrees, smile widening further. “And I do believe our dear brother has been given leave from work for – what was it again, Mycroft? Two weeks they want you to stew before they’ll take you back?”
“Three,” Mycroft bites out. His expression has taken on a certain long suffering edge that Beatrice is unsurprised to find that she’s missed.
“Three weeks.” Sherlock sighs with exaggerated pleasure. “So you have nowhere to be –“
“Which is irrelevant,” Mycroft cuts in, “because to revisit this little game is completely out of the question. I won’t waste my breath arguing the fact that it’s criminal considering I can hardly expect the pair of you to care about such trivialities, but do try to see reason. We have just survived a calamity. Our father is dead. We nearly died. Our emotions are still heightened and there are a thousand things still left unsaid between us. We are all three of us intoxicated –“
“I haven’t drank anything,” Beatrice denies.
“And we’ve drank together before, Mycroft. Neither of us is so feeble minded to lose all sense of ourselves after a single swallow of wine,” Sherlock says.
“ – and we are siblings,” Mycroft goes on, stressing the last word, utterly ignoring anything they have to say. “What might have been excused when we were children under the notion of playing games would be quite inexcusable now that we are adults. Just – think about it, won’t you? Think of all the reasons we cannot possibly do what you are suggesting, not the least of which being what our mother will say if she ever finds out.”
“What I think,” Beatrice says, “is that you’re rather obfuscating the heart of the matter, brother dear. You talk of criminality, morality, implied ramifications in the form of mother’s upset and a pair of executions for sodomy in the public square. What you haven’t told us is that you don’t want to.”
It brings Mycroft up short. For a moment, he becomes very still and looks into Beatrice’s eyes like he’s trying to find all the secrets of the universe within them.
“That isn’t relevant either,” Mycroft says after a long pause. “Beatrice –“
“I want to,” she says. Her eyes cut across to Sherlock, a quick stab and away. “Sherlock wants to.”
“And if you both wanted to jump off a bridge,” Mycroft snaps, “I suppose by your reasoning I should be all too happy to follow behind.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Sherlock asks.
The question takes Mycroft aback. He blinks, his lips part – but no sound comes from his mouth. He rather looks at Sherlock as though he has just been stabbed in the chest.
“Something to think on,” Sherlock goes on, a light and almost airy tone in his voice.
A moment later, he leans forward and presses his lips to Mycroft’s own, muffling the startled sound that Mycroft makes as Beatrice’s breath catches in her throat at the sight of them: Mycroft, frozen at first, before the tension seeps from his body, he leans closer to Sherlock, and his mouth opens –
And Beatrice watches, for the first time finally feeling as though she is really at home.