It's been a week and nothing. No sign, no hint, no case, not even a whisper of one. Summer's almost over. Lily will have to go back to her job, and she won't be able to help out as much. Of course, he's half hoping for that.
Rosie's been helping her in the garden the past week. Sherlock went with them once, though Lily still seemed off. She would look at him, then look away. Endless chatter spilled from her lips, not that Sherlock minded. It was about Liam, and her parents, and her friends, and her book. She didn't say much of anything about anything, just kept talking, in between telling Rosie about the fruits and vegetables and the flowers.
She's anxious. Sherlock, for the umpteenth time, feels guilty for putting her in this situation.
The Holders were still unable to tell him Robert's last name. They didn't even have pictures, though Hayley swore she had taken some. Sherlock suspects he deleted them to get rid of the evidence. Her phone's been checked since. The information has simply been erased.
Arthur told Sherlock where he'd met Robert, but the place didn't turn up anything. People came and went there. It was a den of activity, full of smoke and noise and cards. No one could tell him anything about Robert — the Robert he was looking for. Plenty of people named Robert were mentioned, or were there, but they didn't match the description.
He then revisited Susan Cushing, now once again sharing her home with her sister Sarah, who was mostly quiet during the whole interview, though she contributed information where she could. Susan likewise could find no pictures of Ray, despite taking some. But his description matched Robert's, down to the fact that he was incredibly charming, despite numerous red flags.
"I tell you, Mr. Holmes, I've never met a man like him in my life," Susan had said. "If he came here right now and asked me to take him back, I can't tell you for certain that he wouldn't convince me."
All this information and still he feels no closer. Why the Beryl Coronet? Was that just a coincidence? Was he really after it, but then Sherlock came and ruined his plans? Or did he never want the Coronet in the first place?
What does he want?
"The million pound question," Sherlock mumbles.
"What?" John asks, in the kitchen.
"Nothing."
John sighs. "Sherlock, you've done all you can do. All we can do now is wait."
"But we need to be ready for him," Sherlock argues.
"I think we're as ready as we're going to get."
"Lock!" Rosie runs into the room, carrying toys — trains, teddy bears, crayons, dolls. They fall from her arms, leaving a trail behind her from her room.
"Yes, Ro?" he says.
"Let's play."
"There you go, good distraction," John says. "Play with Rosie for a while and get your mind off it."
Sherlock sits in the floor in front of Rosie, who hands him a teddy bear and a red steam engine. "You be Charles and James."
"Which one is which?"
Rosie rolls her eyes. "Charles is the teddy bear, James is the train."
"Oh, I see."
"I'm Thomas and Cindy." She picks up the blue train and a doll.
"What are all these other things?" Sherlock asks, gesturing to the other dolls, trains, and bears on the ground.
"I dunno." She holds the blue train towards him and speaks in a deep voice. "James! We have a big problem!"
Sherlock holds out James, speaking in his regular voice. "What is it, Thomas?"
Rosie stops. "Do the voice, Lock."
"What do you say?" John calls from the kitchen.
"Please."
Sherlock uses a comically high voice. "What is it, James?"
Rosie cracks up, barely able to get the word out. "Thomas!"
"Oh! What is it, Thomas?"
"A tree is blocking the tracks!"
"Oh dear! How did it happen?"
"We have to find out! Come on James, the game is afoot!"
"What about Charles?"
"He's sleeping!"
She rolls Thomas over to John's chair, using one of the legs as the fallen tree. Sherlock attempts to guess how it happened, though he's thwarted at every turn. Usually, in these games, he is Watson and Rosie is Holmes. Except she's controlling the story.
If only he could do that.
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Lily sits at her laptop, that blue line blinking at her. She has to work on her book — she has to — but her mind keeps going back to Sherlock. Precisely why she needs to work on her book.
She just needs to write something down. Once she has the words on the page, then she'll have something to edit. Something to tweak. She sighs. Just type — anything.
Rose was a flower fairy living in fairy land. She quite liked fairy land, for she had many friends there and many things to do. She worked in the castle gardens for the Queen.
She and the other flower fairies kept up the garden, taking care of the flowers, pulling up the weeds, planting and growing and watering.
One day, Rose came across a curious sight. Their planting tool was broken! The other flower fairies were shocked, wondering how it could have happened. They took it to the fixing fairies. They didn't know who had broken it, either, but they could fix it.
In the meantime, Rose wanted to know what had happened. She went to solve the mystery.
Lily sits back. Is this any good? Where does she go now? She doesn't even know who broke the thing, not yet. She has the why, sort of. She just has to get there.
A knock sounds on her door, both a blessing and a curse. She goes up to answer it and finds John on the other side. "We've got a case."
"What happened?"
"That's what we're finding out. Come on."
They head upstairs, to 221B, where a red haired a man is sitting in a chair in the middle of the room. He looks up when Lily and John walk in. "Oh, you must be Lily!"
She stops. "How did you know?"
"Oh, I read the blog!" he says. "Dr. Watson really knows how to write a story. Like I said, Doctor, it is an honor to meet you. You as well, Mr. Holmes."
Sherlock smiles a bit, nods, then gets down to business. "Start from the beginning."
He sighs. "Well, my name is Will Jacobs — I don't know if I said that. Anyway, I was looking for a job since I just got sacked, and I saw this ad online for The Red Headed League. At first, I thought it was some club, but then I saw that you get paid £500 a week to be in it. So I signed up. I didn't think I'd get it, really, when they started asking about work history and stuff, but then I got a call. Told me to come to the office for an interview.
"I get there, meet this guy. Archie Samuel, he said his name was. He asks me my name, my availability, and then he says 'You start tomorrow.' So I came back, and he put me in this room with a bunch of tools, he said, 'Build something.' I was like, 'What?' He said, 'Build anything. There's some wood, there's some nails. A power saw. Build whatever you want. And don't worry about noise, we've got thick walls in this office.'
"Well, for £500 a week, I thought, this isn't hard. Didn't know what I was doing, but I had to do something. Started building. Came back day after day, eight to five, for about a month. Then, yesterday, I went to work, and there was nobody there. The whole office was empty. No tools, not even the project I was working on. Everything was gone. I tried calling, everything. No one answered. I just don't understand it."
Sherlock's brows furrow. "Yes, that's very strange. Tell me, where did you see this ad?"
"On the blog, actually," Will replied. "It was one of the pop-ups on the side, you know."
"Right. Well. If you'd give me the address of this office, and I will get right on this case."
"Of course."
John gets a paper to write it down, despite the fact that Sherlock will definitely remember it. That done, Sherlock shows the man out, then turns to John. "Time to take Rosie to Aunt Harriet."
"It's him?" John asks.
"Archie Samuels, Samuel Roberts, Ray, Robert. Not to mention that the ad showed up on your blog. It was meant for someone who would come to me."
John sighs. "Alright. I'll go tell her." He takes off up the stairs to Rosie's room.
Lily turns to Sherlock. "No one died. This is... tame, all things considered."
"Doesn't matter. What he's planning won't be tame."
She doesn't even want to say it, but she has to. "You think he wants to kill you?"
"I don't know." He shrugs, sits back in his chair. "Probably."
Lily sits in John's chair, across from him. "You're not even worried."
He meets her eyes, and she notices the anxiety within him, even if his face is calm. "I assure you, Lily, I am very worried. I still think you shouldn't involve yourself in this."
"I'm not abandoning you, Sherlock." She couldn't. Not now.
He goes quiet for a while, then sighs again.
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"I don't understand you," he says. And he doesn't. He doesn't understand her or the way he thinks about her or any of this. It's maddening.
"Why?" she asks. The other million pound question. Why? Why is she still here?
He shakes his head a bit. "You're a schoolteacher-"
"Yes?"
"-and a baker."
"Aspiring, but yes."
"And while there are certain aspects of you that are above average, by all reason and logic, you should be normal. A goldfish, as my brother would say."
"A goldfish?"
"You shouldn't want to be here, to be involved in all of this. There should be nothing incredibly remarkable about you at all," he explains. "Of course, you're very perceptive of other people's feelings and motives, and your appearance is what I would describe as... well, better than most. And then, the above average intellect that you do have is largely wasted on five year olds-"
She stands. "Wasted?!"
He frowns. "Why do you keep repeating certain words that I'm saying?"
She doesn't quite answer his question. "Wasted?! My 'above average intellect' is wasted?!"
He notices the look on her face, the furrowed brows, the almost scowl. Oh, dear. "You don't seem to like that description-"
"Of course I don't!" she shouts. "You honestly think what intelligence l've managed to posses is wasted on children?! The future of our world?! You think the knowledge I try to give them every day that I'm with them is a waste?! It's not just about intelligence, it's not just about grades and scores and exams. I teach them more than that — I teach them kindness, I teach them truth, I teach them how to respect each other and say sorry and make it right when they've made a mistake. I teach them their importance in this world, I make sure they know they are loved and they can do anything they put their mind and effort to. Of course, if they're going to be Prime Minister or a doctor — or the only consulting detective in the world — it'd help if they knew how to read and write!"
He said before that she wouldn't've been pretty when she was angry, but he was entirely wrong. Her brows pulled together, her small hands clenched in fists, and then there was her eyes. They were burning with fire, the color of honey
— raw, dark honey, the kind of honey you'd see and know not to eat because it would be bitter and too thick, too sticky, with a twinge of something wrong in it. It's the taste that's in his mouth right now, looking at her eyes. Feeling all that anger smacking him right in the face. He tries to save this. "I didn't say your job wasn't important, I said your level of intelligence is above average-"
He fails.
"And that's supposed to make it better?! I wouldn't care if you thought I was stupid, the point is, the years l've spent teaching will never be a waste, not in my eyes."
"I don't think they'd be a waste necessarily, but right... Well, look at what you've done here. You've helped me solve these case, you're putting yourself in danger. As a normal person, you should've left a long time ago. Unless you're not normal, which is the only explanation as you're still here. There's something remarkable about you, and you haven't been using it until now."
She closes her eyes, breathes. "I'm going to bake, Sherlock. I'm going to leave my tiny little insignificant mark on the world through the children I teach and the underpriced cookies I'll sell. It's not about money or being the smartest person in the room. I'm not. I don't want to be. That's not my goal. I want to spread joy and love, through whatever means I've been gifted the talent for. That may not seem very big to you, Sherlock, but it's just the right size for me."
"But your mind-"
"I've used it to try to help you on your cases. That's what it's good for. Evidently that's not enough for you. Evidently you don't even need me."
"I do, but not at the cost of your life."
"You really think I could die? That he would kill me?"
His heart is in his throat and it's pounding. "I can't know for certain, but even if he might... Are you really prepared to face that?"
"I am. I guess I shouldn't be. I'm too normal."
"You are perfectly normal."
"Thanks, Sherlock." From her tone, he can tell that wasn't genuine. She sighs again. Her hands are shaking. "I need to go."
"Lily-"
"I'll see you later." The door shuts behind her.
John and Rosie enter with her bags. Rosie looks at Sherlock, shaking her head. "You made Lily mad."
"We heard just about the whole thing," John says. "Nice going."
Sherlock groans. "I just meant-"
"I know what you meant, Sherlock. And if your goal was to push her away, I think you might've succeeded."
"Good. Then she won't be in danger."
"She won't talk to you, either."
He frowns. It's ultimately better for her to forget about him, to be mad and ignore him, than for her to come back and be... Lily. As much as he will miss her. It'd be worse if she were dead. He can't let that happen.
And still, he doesn't want her to go.
Why? It's selfish, but he can't help it. An idea hits him, one that almost makes him nauseous. Or maybe it's butterflies. Or maybe...
"John, what did it feel like when you fell in love with Mary?" he asks.
John looks up. "You're asking because of Lily, aren't you?"
"How did you know?"
"Sherlock... I've never seen you so happy, not even about a case. I think you have smiled more in these past months than you have in your whole life."
"So you think I love her?"
"I won't tell you how you feel. I'm just telling you what I've seen. Either way, I think she's changed you, at least a little bit. In a good way."
Sherlock nods, "She... She makes want to change. Does that make sense?"
John smiles. "Perfectly."
"You're smiling."
"I'm just really happy for you. That's all."
He isn't nauseous anymore, but he's anxious, and he doesn't quite know what to do. "You think I'm in love with her."
"It doesn't matter what I think. What do you think?"
"I need to think about it."
John nods, grabbing some lunch, then taking Rosie by the hand. "Well, let us know when we get back. We're off to Aunt Harriet's."
"Bye, Lock!" Rosie says, running over to hug him. "I hope you love Lily."
When the door closes behind her, he isn't sure what he hopes for.