Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter LXIX - Purgatory

-Emily-

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"Out."

I am forcefully manoeuvred from the back of the police car to the pavement. The chill in the air halts me in my tracks – I've become accustomed to Bronzefield's strictly regulated temperatures – and I look around, eyes smarting. After five weeks in an establishment where lighting is kept dimmed and yellow, the sudden brightness stings. I'm still in my prison jumpsuit and am attracting a lot of unwanted attention – Mycroft's doing, I expect; keep me restrained until the last minute, force me to walk around in this very public reminder of my incarceration knowing full well I can't afford alternative clothing.

One last humiliation.

The street is smaller than the one preserved in my memory, all grey flagstones and ageing terraced houses; the café overhang has faded from its grubby red to a similarly grubby pink, and the iron railings stand with their winter coats of rust, worn, forgotten, much like the inhabitants of Baker Street. I saw the witness protection as we pulled up – a solitary silver car, parked on the opposite side of the road, the windows tinted and driver concealed. Constant surveillance. As if that would stop him. Stiffly, and with some hesitance, I approach the door, its lacquer chipped and brass knocker askew. I lift my fist. I knock twice. The sound reverberates.

There's some disturbance behind me; I can hear footsteps, heels on concrete, an indistinguishable shout – but I don't turn around. Instead, I listen. There's someone humming in the hallway. It gets louder as they approach the door, but is interrupted by the sound of quick feet on the stairs and a harsh 'leave it' – a voice I recognise as Sherlock's. The humming ceases, and its absence is followed by a startled exclamation.

The door swings open.

Sherlock stands in front of me, pale and sleepless in a crumpled silk shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows and hair uncombed; snagged curls brush the top of his collar – unturned, creased like the rest of him – and his forearms bear a patchwork of bruises and scratches and something pulped that looks decidedly like baby food. He doesn't blink. His gaze moves in a sweeping motion, intrusively calculating. I see myself through his eyes: a woman with broad shoulders and wide-set hips, equally familiar, equally strange, on the doorstep in a greying jumpsuit, a threat, hair more frizz than curl and face pinched with a bitterness that has established dominance over her expression. She lifts her chin – an unconscious gesture of discomfort – and shifts her weight to her heels. Together we stand. Together we observe.

We regard each other with mutual, speculative apprehension.

"Could you have made your arrival any more dramatic?" he asks, when the silence loses its appeal. "You've brought half of Scotland Yard with you."

"Blame your brother."

"I always do."

The flash of a camera jolts us back to our grim reality: I spin around, panicked by the burst of light, and find myself face to face with an entourage of rapidly-assembled journalists, drawn to my prison gear and unprecedented arrival like blowflies to a corpse; parasitic and hungry.

"Get in," says Sherlock, quickly. He takes my wrist and hauls me inside before I have chance to respond.

"Mr Holmes, just one question about Ms–"

"Is that the press?" The voice takes shape as Mrs Hudson steps into the hallway, wielding an oven glove as if to ward off the unwanted inquisition. "Tell them if they stop me from getting my groceries again, I'm calling–"