Chapter Text
*
There was a cottage in Sussex Downs.
Well, there were lots of cottages in Sussex Downs. But only one of them belonged to Sherlock Holmes.
He did not speak of it. He did not visit it.
But he thought about it, sometimes. Thought of salt air, of rambling gardens, the soothing hum of the apiary.
It would be a quiet life. If he ever went in for that sort of thing. Which he didn't.
*
Sherlock stood at the back of the chapel, already starting to sweat in his coat. It was cold outside, and the heater was going full blast inside the small room.
There was a crowd. Men and women he'd never seen, pressed together in the pews. It surprised him. He had not expected there to be a crowd.
The vicar was speaking. He had a soft voice. It was difficult to hear him over the roar of the heater.
Sherlock shifted where he stood, looked at the coffin. Above and to his left, one of the overhead lights had begun to falter. It hummed and buzzed, faintly flickering.
Next to him, Rosie made a quiet noise in the back of her throat. She reached out, took his hand. Squeezed.
He was not sure if she was meant to be taking comfort from him, or offering.
The service stretched on. He could not make out the vicar's words. When it was over, the people crowded together in the plain wooden pews stood up and gathered their coats.
Sherlock did not wait for anyone to turn around and catch him with a curious eye. He flipped up his coat collar, pushed through the heavy door and went out into the cold grey afternoon. Rosie trailed behind him, not speaking. She did not hesitate, did not linger.
They took a taxi back to Baker Street.
He scrolled absently through his phone. Rosie sat with her hands folded in her lap and stared out the window. She did not speak.
She reminded him of John, like this. How John had been, once, years ago. Quiet and contained and so very angry.
Twenty years. She had been in his life for twenty years, and while there had been plenty of rows, plenty of shouting matches and frightful bursts of temper, there had never before been a silent seething anger quite like this.
It settled, cold and prickling, all around him, leaving him restless and uneasy.
"Thank you," Rosie said, when they finally shut the door behind them, blocking out the cold and the damp and the traffic noise. She hung her coat by the door, went up the stairs.
Sherlock watched her go for a moment, and then followed.
John was in his chair by the fireplace. He looked over his shoulder at them as they came through the door. His expression was wary.
Rosie sat down on the sofa. She was silent, had been silent for three days now, except for the muted thank you she'd just offered at the foot of the stairs, and before that, just the one word to Sherlock that had brought him to the crowded chapel in the first place: Please.
He had never been able to refuse her anything.
Except—
Sherlock waved away the thought. He had spent enough time dwelling on it, had spent days dwelling on it while the hateful silence had thickened and festered between them, poisoning the air.
He turned his attention to John. He did not have a book in his hands, as was his custom. Nor was there one on the little table next to his chair. The fire was unlit, and he had not pulled the soft knit blanket across his lap.
He was tense. Ill at ease. There was something of the soldier in him still, even after all these years. He did not like to be comfortable while awaiting the start of the battle.
There was a mulish set to John's jaw, disapproval etched into the lines between his eyes. He'd been wearing that expression ever since the phone call, ever since the words Wiggins and bad batch and very sudden had been spoken.
No. To be honest, he'd been wearing that expression before the phone call, he'd been wearing that expression for three full days, ever since Rosie had told them—
Sherlock shut his eyes.
"How was it?" John asked. There was a forced politeness to his tone. John had forgiven a great many people a great many things, but he had never quite warmed to Billy Wiggins.
Sherlock opened his eyes. Looked at Rosie. She shrugged, did not respond.
Still angry, then. But she had sat on the sofa. She could have gone straight upstairs to her bedroom. She could have packed the remainder of her things and moved out. She could have called Mycroft. She had not done any of that. It meant she was looking to engage, in some way. She wanted to be reached.
Rosebud, Wiggins used to call her, back when she was small.
Perhaps she didn't want to be reached at all. Perhaps she only wanted comfort in the face of losing a friend.
The silence was terrible.
They did not know how to interact in silence, the three of them. Their home was one of noise, of chaos, of shouting and laughter and, yes, the occasional explosion. For nearly twenty years now, it had been—
He was getting sentimental. It happened, now and again. More frequently lately. A symptom of advancing age, John had told him with a wry little grin.
"Sherlock?"
He startled. John was craning his neck to look over his shoulder. He had asked a question. About the funeral. Wiggins. Right.
Sherlock went into the room, sat down in his chair. He leaned back, pressed his fingers under his chin. Studied John in the weak grey daylight that filtered through the windows.
"Surprisingly well-attended," he said.
He had always assumed Wiggins had no family. He had not bothered to deduce the details. It had never seemed important.
"I should have gone," John said.
"He wasn't your friend," Rosie said.
Sherlock blinked at the unexpected sound of her voice. John, steady John, did not react at all.
"But he was yours," John said. He looked at Sherlock when he said it.
Sherlock frowned. He let his hands drop away from his mouth, folded them on his lap. Sat back. Considered.
He had not exactly considered Wiggins a friend. An ally, certainly. A resource. But a friend?
I'm his protégé, Wiggins had said, all those years ago on that terrible Christmas.
I consider her something of a protégée, Mycroft had said, three days ago, adjusting his tie and looking at Rosie with a calculating eye.
He shut his eyes again. He did not want to think about it. Eventually it would need to be aired. A decision would need to be reached. But for the moment he—he just—
John's hands were on his face, warm and weathered, and Sherlock melted forward, not realising how much he had longed for that touch until it was pressed into his skin. It still had the power to surprise him, even after all these years, how much he needed John.
"I should have gone with you," John murmured, his lips brushing against Sherlock's forehead, and there was none of that forced politeness in his voice any more, only a heavy, weary sort of sorrow.
Even after all Wiggins had done for them over the years, and all he had done for Rosie, for John there would always be tense words in a filthy doss house, the flash of a folded knife in the shadows. There would be the weeks that Sherlock had spent gleefully self-destructing, prodding relentlessly at his damaged veins, seeing and hearing and tasting things that were not real, could never be real. There would be a morgue floor and John's heartbroken furious face, Sherlock's blood on the tile and Wiggins' best recipe still singing in his veins.
"No," Sherlock said, quiet, and he tried to put the weight of his understanding behind his words. John could not always forgive. That was all right.
John made a soft noise in the back of his throat, ran one hand through Sherlock's hair.
"He was very clever," Sherlock said.
"Clever people do very stupid things," John said.
Sherlock leaned back to get a good look at John's face, smiled a little. They both turned, almost as one, to look at Rosie.
She looked steadily back at them. There was so much John in the stubborn set of her jaw, so much Mary in the sharp gleam in her eyes.
"Yes," she agreed. "They do."
*
When Rosie was thirteen, she had run away.
There had been a frightful row, a smashed mug and thundering stamping footsteps up to her room at the top of the stairs.
There had been John, red-faced and furious and shocked all at once, adrift amidst a sea of ceramic shards.
Sherlock had watched it unfold in slow motion, had seen all of the intersections where the conversation had taken a wrong turn, all of the times John had spoken too soon, all of the words Rosie had misinterpreted, all of the ways the stubborn genes they both shared had caused them to batter relentlessly against one another instead of seeking compromise.
"She'll apologise," Sherlock had said. He'd come into the kitchen, stepping carefully around the shattered remains of John's favourite mug. It hurt, a bit, seeing it in pieces on the floor. The mug had been a resident of Baker Street for as long as John had.
"She—" John had said, and Sherlock had turned towards him, startled by the hitch in his voice. Tempers had been high, certainly, but he'd been given to understand that was fairly typical with adolescents and not to be taken personally.
"—will be expected to use a portion of her allowance to procure a replacement," Sherlock said. She had hurled it against the wall. There had been an impressive strength in that throw. She had already proven herself an above-average talent in sport. Among other things.
John shook his head, looking small and lost in a way that he hadn't been for years, not since those first terrible months after Mary had died.
Sherlock had gone to him, had taken him gently into his arms. Years ago, he could never have imagined offering physical comfort in such a way. It had, over time, become second nature to him.
"It's natural for her to test authority at this age," he said. He'd read that in a book.
"There's testing authority and there's bloody obliterating it," John said, but there was chagrin seeping into his voice, slowly edging out that stunned shocked blankness.
"Well," Sherlock said, and he let a little smirk creep into his voice. "Her parents—"
"Yeah," John had looked down at the ground, had actually huffed a little laugh. When he'd looked back up, his eyes were damp. "I bet you were a terror at that age, yeah?"
And Sherlock had frozen, because when he'd said her parents he had meant Mary and John, of course, he had not been including himself in the equation at all. Except the way John had phrased it had seemed to imply—
John had touched his face, had shaken his head, had offered a sad little smile. "Sherlock, she may not share your genes, but she's as much your daughter as mine. You know that. You've always known that."
And he supposed he had known it, to some extent, had known it from the night all those years ago when Rosie, just three years old, had clung feverish and sweaty against John's chest, her breath hitching with little sobs, and he had hovered nervously in the doorway while John put her to bed, watching with anxious eyes, wanting to see for himself that she would be all right. And then what had come after, John's lips on his for the first time, John's hands in his hair, on his skin.
It was one thing to know it. It was another to hear it said out loud.
He'd nodded, because the words would not come. And then he'd stepped away from John and had gone up the stairs and knocked softly, because surely enough time had passed and Rosie would be ready to see reason. Her temper had burned fierce and hot and fast since early childhood, and she'd rarely stayed upset for long.
But Rosie had not answered his soft knock, nor had she responded to his louder knock or his call of her name. And when he'd opened the door, he'd found an empty room and an open window.
He'd stood frozen for far too long, staring. He had not anticipated—he had not seen it coming. Not even with her ferocious and sudden anger, nor her rapid retreat. He had not read her intentions. He had fully expected to open the door and find her sitting on the floor, teary-eyed and ready for a reconciliation.
He'd not anticipated having to turn around and go back into the hallway, to stand at the top of the stairs in the place where he'd once kissed John for the very first time and say the words she's gone to John's stricken face.
But that's what he'd had to do.
*
It was all Mycroft's fault.
Most things usually were, of course. But this—three days of silence. The kind of silence that felt like the end of something that he'd had no idea carried an expiration date.
It could not continue. And it was all Mycroft's fault.
I consider her something of a protégée, he'd said to Sherlock, three days prior.
Sherlock could recall the expression on Rosie's face. The proud, stubborn smile. He'd watched that smile crack, had watched her face harden and close off in a way he'd never seen.
Now she sat on the sofa, arms crossed, watching them with a flat, cool expression. He'd seen that expression before, on Mary. Usually when she was about to do something ill-advised.
John, inexplicably, laughed. It was not an angry laugh, nor was it a mirthful one. It sounded resigned.
"This is what you want?" John asked her. "Really?"
She did not respond.
"Of course it's not," Sherlock said. "It's what Mycroft wants."
Rosie was up off the sofa and heading for the stairs before he'd even finished speaking. He stood, followed her, pulled free of John's gentle grip on his arm.
"Watson," he said.
Rosie stopped halfway down the stairs, turned around. Her face was blank. She was quite good at hiding her emotions.
She'd learned from the best, after all.
There were a thousand things he wanted to say. "Where are you going?"
"Out."
"Will you be coming back?"
She pursed her lips. Silence stretched between them.
One word to Mycroft, he knew, and she'd be spirited off somewhere. Issued a new identity. Sent blinking and unprepared into a new life, one he'd never wanted for her. He'd never see her again. John would never see her again.
MI6. Mycroft, bloody Mycroft, had recruited her into MI6 straight out of university. And she, great blithering idiot that she was, wanted to take him up on it.
"How could you ever have thought this was a good idea?" he'd demanded of his brother, three days ago, while Rosie stood by his side. His brother, who had called Rosie his protégée. "All those years, thinking you were the smart one."
"It is a good idea, you're just too blinded by your own attachment to see it."
Sherlock had scoffed.
"Her skills—" Mycroft said.
"Skills? What skills? She's twenty years old. Practically still a child."
"Top of her class, Sherlock. She's clever, and resourceful, and possesses an abundance of discipline and focus—skills you decidedly lacked at her age."
"She's a child."
Mycroft had stared at him, nonplussed. "She's an adult, Sherlock, and well capable of making her own decisions."
"She's reckless. Impulsive. Short-sighted. Not the right temperament for what you're asking."
"You are describing yourself, not Rosamund. She's to graduate with the highest honours. The world expects great things of her."
"And you want to use her as a tool. As a—what's your preferred term? A blunt instrument?"
"There is nothing at all blunt about her, and you know that."
And Sherlock had looked over at Rosie, then, at the proud smile that was splintering and collapsing on her face with every word he spoke, and he'd said the thing that had damned them all: "This is clearly a misguided attempt to connect with her mother's memory."
"Fuck you," Rosie had said. Her voice had been steady, icy. There had been no trace of temper, of emotion. They had not been careless words thrown in anger. She'd meant them.
Then three days of silence.
And in the midst of that, the news about Wiggins. And the brief thaw, Rosie's soft please, the surprisingly crowded chapel.
Now Rosie, at the foot of the stairs, slipping into her coat.
She looked up at him, her jaw set, her eyes hard. Mary's eyes.
"Will you be coming back?" he asked again.
She blinked. She knew he loathed repetition. The fact that he'd spoken his words a second time had made an impact on her.
She nodded, once. A sharp little nod. John's nod.
No words. But it was enough.
She went out the door without looking back.
*
When Rosie was thirteen, Sherlock had stood at the top of the stairs and looked at her empty room and had told John She's gone.
The impulse had been to tear out into the night in search of her.
He'd taken a moment, thought about London, about the streets and alleyways he knew intimately, the love for the city that had kindled in Rosie as well. He'd taught her how to disappear. He'd made it a game.
There were countless routes she might have taken.
He'd frozen up, panicked, and had looked at John's stricken face. John, who would almost immediately begin thinking of everything he could have, should have done differently.
He'd thought of Mary, there and gone in the blink of an eye, dead before she ever truly got to know her daughter.
"I can't lose her," John had said, pacing tight circles in the kitchen, his shoes crunching over the shards of his shattered mug, grinding bits of ceramic down into the lino. "Sherlock, she—I can't—"
He'd texted Wiggins.
The word spread swiftly through the homeless network. They knew her, of course.
Within fifteen minutes, his phone had begun buzzing with text messages. Updates. Photos. Rosie, small and fierce and tear-streaked and furious, making her way through the shadows.
He'd wanted to go and fetch her immediately. But he'd held back, thought of his own childhood, of the bolt-holes he'd accumulated, the secret quiet places he'd crept off to.
"She's all right," he'd told John, helpless and frightened and hoping he was making the right call. "Just—let her."
They'd sat up well into the night, faces cast blue in the glow from Sherlock's screen as the texts rolled in. In his mind, Sherlock plotted a map of London, vivid rose-coloured dots wherever she had been spotted.
Wiggins sent a photo of her sitting on a bench, knees under her chin, half-eaten carton of chips at her side. She'd looked cold and forlorn.
"All right," Sherlock said, finally. "Let's go bring her home."
And they'd gone out into the chill night air, had come upon Rosie and Wiggins sitting together on the bench, sharing the chips in companionable silence. Wiggins had covered her shoulders with a blanket.
And Rosie had jumped to her feet and run to them, had embraced them both with a tearful, heaving apology.
Sherlock had met Wiggins' eye over her shoulder.
"Thank you," he'd said.
And thank you was exactly what Rosie would say to him, seven years later, after he'd accompanied her to Wiggins' funeral.
He looked at the door. He looked at his coat, hanging next to John's on the wall as it had done for years. Looked at the empty space where Rosie's was meant to be.
He did not follow.