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Fic: Cracks in the In-Between Places (11/21)
Title: Cracks in the In-Between Places
Author:
swissmarg
Beta readers:
ruth0007, billiethepoet
Rating: PG-13
Relationship: John/Sherlock
Word count: ca. 93,500 when complete, this chapter 3,905 words
Summary: AU set in the universe ofnox_candida's Getting Better. John and Sherlock work together to flush out Mary's killers, and Tristram has to come to terms with what his father's new friend means for him. No series 3 spoilers (or series 1 or 2, for that matter).
See chapter one for the complete header with warnings, acknowledgments, disclaimers, and notes.
Chapter 11 on AO3
Chapter Eleven
It's morning. Technically. It's still pitch black out, but Tristram knows he's not going to be able to sleep any more. If he has even slept at all. He must have - he doesn't think he would have been able to lie motionless staring at nothing for six hours without drifting off. But it doesn't feel like he's slept. His whole body aches, his mind is racing, and his eyes and mouth are sticky and dry. He's not ill; he can tell the difference. It's like it was just before his father took him out of his old school, when he'd lain awake night after night trying not to think about what had happened at school the day before, or how he could possibly avoid it happening again.
He has managed to blank out the actual image of his father and Doctor Watson lying on the bed together, but the knowledge is still there. It should be okay, it really should. He knows that grown-ups tend to pair off, that it's normal, but all of the adults in his life have been single as long as he's known them: Uncle Mycroft, Grandmother, Mrs Hudson …and of course Father. He's never personally known two adults who live together the way Emily's aunts do. Is that why it makes him uncomfortable? No matter the reason, he's not in the mood to be particularly reasonable anyway. He's feeling out of sorts and hard done by. Father can barely be bothered to so much as put his hand on Tristram's shoulder, but he was touching Doctor Watson all over. He couldn't stop whatever he was doing earlier in the evening for five minutes to come and say good night to Tristram, but he pretty clearly took more than five minutes to do a whole lot more than say good night to Emily's father. And he would have taken even longer - maybe they would have even slept in the same bed all night. Like married people do.
Emily said that their fathers might get married. A dreadful thought occurs to Tristram: could they be married already? Is that why they were in bed together? Is it possible that they're all here at Llanbroc for a completely different reason, not at all related to a case? It was Tristram's own conclusion that they came here either to get away from some threat, or so that his father could investigate something. No one ever actually said that's why they came. Maybe Father and Doctor Watson just wanted to be alone. But then why did they bring Tristram and Emily? And why the bodyguard? Why did Father tell Tristram to report anything unusual to him? And so on. These are the thoughts that plague Tristram.
He can't stand lying here any longer. He checks his watch. It's almost six-thirty. Maybe someone else is up. And even if they aren't, he has to find something to do. He turns on the light and gets dressed, takes his phone from under the pillow, and goes out into the hall. The light is off under his father's door. Tristram considers seeing if Emily is awake yet, but he doesn't want to wake her or Doctor Watson - if he's even there - by knocking, and there's no way he's going to just open the door to check. Grandmother is the next possibility, but she doesn't like to be disturbed when she's in her rooms, and her door is closed too. She might have gone downstairs already, or over to her studio. He resigns himself to going downstairs on his own.
Tristram checks the kitchen, but it's empty. Too early for Mrs Bowen to be here. He pours himself a glass of milk and stirs in two spoonfuls of chocolate powder, then wanders back up to the main level with it and kicks around the green parlour and the library, but he's too antsy to settle to anything. The sun isn't up yet, but it's getting there, the blackness outside starting to give way to a softer grey. Tristram puts on his shoes and jacket and slips outside. Everything's damp, but it's not raining. In fact, the sky is all pale violet. It looks like the sun might come out later on, once the morning mist has burned off.
Tristram heads for Grandmother's studio in the old carriage house. She sometimes spends all night there. More than once, when they've been here during the summer, Grandmother has let Tristram play with her art supplies while she works, and lost all track of the time. Not really being bothered where he sleeps, Tristram simply ends up crashing on the chaise longue in the corner while Grandmother paints or throws clay or stares at a blank canvas for hours on end. It's calming, hearing the scrape of the spatula or the hum of the pottery wheel, or, when she's deep in her dark place (as she calls it), just knowing she's sitting there across the room, warm and breathing and perfectly content for Tristram to share the space with her. Tristram would actually quite like to curl up on the chaise longue in Grandmother's studio at the moment. He hopes she's there.
As he passes the old stable, he sees a little flash of light in one of the windows. He keeps his eye on the spot, but it disappears almost immediately. He looks around but doesn't see anything obvious that might have caused a reflection. The sun isn't up nearly high enough yet, even if there weren't so much mist.
He waits for a couple of minutes, motionless, to see if something else happens. It doesn't. It was probably just a trick of the eye, like a fata morgana or something. He wouldn't even think twice about it if it weren't for the person with the cigarette outside his window last night.
But now he has. He connects the flare of yellow flame from yesterday with the flash he saw just now. Maybe it's the same person, inside the stable. One of Uncle Mycroft's men. There to protect him and Father and Doctor Watson and Emily from whatever it is they need protection from. The bogeyman, probably. He understood from the beginning, of course he did, that 'the bogeyman' wasn't a supernatural creature from a fairy tale, like a troll or a ghost. He knows the difference between made-up monsters like those in the Harry Potter stories and the real-life monsters - criminals and crazy people - his father works with the police to track down.
He can see from here that the stable door is closed. Why would the bodyguard have gone into the stable anyway? It's just dirty and smelly in there. On the other hand, it's pretty cold out, and wet, especially if he was on duty all night. Maybe he wanted to sit down somewhere dry for a bit. And, apparently, he's not supposed to be smoking while on the job. At least that's what Tristram supposes his father meant when he said the man should be drawn and quartered for indulging in a nicotine fix. Tristram knows what 'drawn and quartered' means, and he doesn't think his father meant that literally. But it still suggests that the man would be in quite a bit of trouble. So it all makes sense, actually.
Tristram is pretty pleased with himself for figuring it out. He's getting chilled too, standing there in the wet grass with only his thin jacket on. He should go on to Grandmother's studio. He's bothered by a niggling doubt, though. He wants to check whether he's right. One quick look in the stable. Maybe there's nothing there after all. Just some mice, like Doctor Watson said.
He makes his way across the grass and cautiously opens the door. It's too dark inside for him to see much of anything, other than the dull grey squares of the small windows set into the walls, and for that reason it's the smell hits him first: cigarette smoke. It's somehow darker and sweeter than the acrid stuff his father smokes, but there's no mistaking it. He feels a little jolt of triumph, but doesn't have long to pat himself on the back, because a deep voice speaks out of the dimness further inside:
"Close the door carefully, you don't want to scare them."
Tristram freezes. Of course, he'd thought there was someone in here, but he hadn't actually expected it. Now he doesn't know what to do. He could leave, his observations and deductions confirmed, but on the other hand he doesn't really know yet that the voice belongs to someone Uncle Mycroft sent. Although who else would be hiding in Grandmother's stable this early in the morning? But mostly, he wonders whom he isn't meant to scare.
He takes long enough dithering that a head pokes around the side of one of the low walls dividing the space into boxes for the horses that used to reside here. The head belongs to a man with a large, flat nose and a big grin. His skin is dark like Mister Mwabila's, who sometimes gives Father a free ride in his taxi. He has a dark, close-knit hat pulled low over his forehead. He puts a finger over his lips and gestures for Tristram to come closer.
"It's a mama and three babies," he says in a low voice. He talks a little like Mister Mwabila too; or at least like someone who probably didn't grow up in London.
Tristram leaves the door open - partly for the light, and partly because no matter how friendly the man looks, he doesn't really want to be shut up in the stable with him - and takes a few steps closer. The man disappears behind the divider. Tristram is left with little choice but to step around it if he wants to see.
The man is sitting cross-legged on the floor. He's wearing dark, bulky clothes. In the shadowy gloom, Tristram can't make out much of their details, but he can see the thin white line of his cigarette balanced between the fingers of one hand. He makes a motion indicating that Tristram should sit down. Tristram stays where he is. The man takes a drag on his cigarette, then nods his head at something.
"Over there, in the corner. They're eating my breakfast, the little shits."
Now Tristram does hunker down, trying to see into the shadows where the man indicated. Then he hears it: several faint rustles, followed by a series of impossibly high squeaks. He looks at the man in delight.
"Mice?"
The man turns to the side away from Tristram and rustles around with what sounds like a plastic bag. A moment later he's holding something out. "You want to give them some? Crumble it up a bit first, mind, and don't lay it down too close to them."
Tristram takes the item - a lump of some kind of cake - and shuffles closer to the spot the sounds are coming from. And then he can see them: four grey mice, one slightly larger than the others, picking their way fastidiously around in the dirt. Tristram carefully breaks off some of the cake and dribbles it on the floor, then backs away again. The mice are suspicious and studiously avoid Tristram's gift at first, but when nothing alarming jumps out of the crumbs after a minute or so, they sniff their way over and start to nibble at them. Tristram grins at the man.
"They're eating it!" he whispers happily.
The man smiles and lifts his cigarette to his lips again. When he's blown out his mouthful of smoke, he says, "That's what they do."
When the mice start looking for more, Tristram stretches his arm out and flicks the rest of the cake bits toward them.
"You're Holmes's son, aren't you?" the man says.
Tristram nods. "And you're the bodyguard," he returns, proud of himself. He expects the man to be surprised, or incredulous, possibly even impressed, and ask how he knows that, the way people react when Father tells them something he's deduced. But the man doesn't say anything, just keeps smoking his cigarette and watching the mice. Tristram is disappointed. But then he decides the man must think someone's told him, that he didn't figure it out on his own. He feels that he should explain. "I saw you light your cigarette from outside. Same as you did last night."
The man narrows his eyes, like he's trying to remember something.
"Outside my window," Tristram says. "Wasn't that you?"
The man considers for a bit, watching Tristram, then says, "So you're on that side? Where's Watson?"
"He has Uncle Mycroft's old room."
The man grunts. "Should have known. Sharing the suite with your father. Cosy. Here." He hands Tristram some more cake. "If you make a trail you might be able to get them to come right to you. Small crumbs now, or they'll be full before they get to you and lose interest."
Tristram is eager to see if it works. He distributes the crumbs strategically in a line leading to his feet, then sits back and stays as still as he can.
"So did you tell anyone?" the man asks. "That you saw me, last night?"
Tristram bites his lip. He feels guilty now. The man is nice, and he doesn't want him to get in trouble. "My father, but... I didn't really see you, just your light. You were gone by the time he came to look. He won't know it was you, and I won't tell, I promise."
"Things could get sticky for me if anyone found out."
"I know, he said you weren't supposed to be smoking."
The man grimaces and stubs his cigarette out on the floor, then tucks the butt away in his pocket. "Damn habit, hard to break."
"My father uses nicotine patches. Maybe you could try that."
The man chuckles. "Maybe I will. Promise you won't say anything about seeing me in here either?"
"Sure," Tristram agrees, relieved that he can absolve himself in this small way.
"So, any plans for today?" the man asks.
Tristram shrugs. "Dunno." He doesn't really want to think about it. Yesterday's outing was bad enough. But if they all go somewhere again today... The prospect of seeing his father and Doctor Watson together again the way they were at the beach isn't something he thinks he could handle right now. But he's not going to have any choice, is he? Although they didn't seem to appreciate Tristram walking in on them last night, they apparently don't care who sees them kissing when they're outside. Although they probably didn't think Tristram was watching them from beneath his fringe.
All of a sudden, Tristram remembers them shaking hands for what seemed like forever that night at Emily's aunts' house, and the way they'd looked at each other for so long. Or Doctor Watson putting his hand on Father's arm and rubbing it the other time, when they came back late (Tristram had wondered what they were doing out so long, but now he thinks he knows). This has been going on so much longer, right under his nose.
On the one hand, it softens the shock, in a way, because it means that his father wasn't trying to hide something from him; Tristram was simply unobservant. He's certain that if his father really wanted to keep his relationship with Doctor Watson a secret, then no one would know about it. And they certainly wouldn't have brought him and Emily along this weekend.
On the other hand, the fact remains that his father has sectioned off yet another part of his life that Tristram isn't invited to join in on. His work takes up so much of his time already that Tristram barely sees him. Or when he does see him, he's so occupied mentally that he isn't approachable anyway. And Tristram is pretty sure that the additional time allotted to spending with Doctor Watson isn't going to come out of his father's working hours. He feels bleak. And the mice seem to have eaten their fill, or else are too distrustful, since they retreat to the shadowy edges of the enclosure and fall silent.
&&&&&&
"Are you sure he didn't get up again? Maybe follow you outside last night?" John clatters down the stairs after Sherlock.
"His bed's still warm. He hasn't been gone more than half an hour." Sherlock leaps down the stairs, taking them two and three at a time.
"Does he have any friends around here? Anyone he might have gone to?" John asks.
Sherlock stops at the bottom of the stairs and wheels around to loom over John, who skids to a halt next to him. "I know this is a difficult concept for you," he snaps, "but I am capable of narrowing down the most likely places my son might have got to."
John holds up his hands. "Just trying to help," he says and lets Sherlock stalk away.
"Daddy?" Emily is standing at the top of the stairs, still wearing her nightclothes, gripping the banister anxiously.
Mrs Holmes is standing behind her with her hands on Emily's shoulders. "What can we do to help, Sherlock?" Her voice is calm and steady.
"Go back to your room and keep the curtains drawn," he calls back over his shoulder as he disappears into the coat room.
"Emily, you can go get dressed and pack your things," John says. "Maybe you could help her, Jeanne."
Mrs Holmes nods and ushers Emily firmly away, overriding the little girl's reluctance to let her father out of her sight.
"And pack the rest of Tris's things as well," John calls after them. "Anything of his you can find!"
Sherlock comes back wearing the green windcheater from the day before and flicking through screens on his phone. "You're not coming with me," he says when John passes him to retrieve his own jacket.
John doesn't even slow his steps. "The hell I'm not. You're not rushing off half-cocked into another trap. You were glad of my help last time."
"This isn't last time. Tristram hasn't been kidnapped, he's gone off on his own."
"And how do you know that?"
Sherlock pauses and gives him a pained look over his phone. "What kidnapper would take the time to let him get dressed and fold his pajamas neatly over the foot of the bed, take him down to the kitchen for a glass of chocolate milk, let him drink it in the library, and finally put on his shoes and jacket before absconding with him?"
"Why are you so worked up then? If he's just gone for a walk round the garden-"
"John, there is someone out there -" Sherlock opens the front door and flings an arm out. "I can't prove it yet, but I know that whoever Tristram saw under his window last night was not supposed to be there. He wasn't taken from the house, but that doesn't mean that whoever is out there won't take advantage of the opportunity when they see him wandering around unprotected."
"Which is exactly why I should go with you." John pulls on his jacket and joins Sherlock at the door.
"No, it's exactly what they would expect. Which is why you will stay here with my mother and your daughter, and make sure that neither of them ends up being an additional opportunity."
"We can have one of Mycroft's men stay here-"
"Do you trust them? With your daughter's life? Can you say with one hundred percent certainty that Moran's people didn't slip a ringer in?" Sherlock points up at the ceiling. His phone beeps and he looks down at it. "It's your call. I can't stay and argue it, I've got Tristram's signal." He turns and walks out the door.
&&&&&&
"Tristram!"
Tristram jerks around at the sound of his father's voice. He's charging across the lawn. He doesn't look best pleased. Tristram stops on the path and waits. He left the bodyguard back in the stable, promising again not to give him away. And the man said he'd be sure and watch out extra hard for Tristram today and make sure nothing happens to him, so Tristram thinks it's a fair deal.
"I told you not to leave the house on your own," Father says as soon as he's in speaking range.
Tristram's heart plummets. He remembers now: Father told him not to go out of the house without either him or Doctor Watson. Not even with Grandmother. It simply hadn't occurred to him that morning, not with everything else he was thinking about. "I forgot," he says in a small voice.
"Do you imagine I make up these rules for my own benefit?" Father continues. His eyes are big and angry.
Tristram doesn't think his father really expects an answer, but he shakes his head because he doesn't think that at all. He knows it's to protect him, just like he'd been told not to go with anyone but Doctor Watson after school, and he went with Emily's Aunt Claire and ended up in the warehouse and... Tristram's stomach twists more than a little uncomfortably. He feels absolutely wretched.
His father must pick up on Tristram's discomfort - hardly surprising, that - because the lines between his eyebrows go from rigid to wrinkled, and he puts a hand on Tristram's shoulder. "Where have you-" he mutters, looking even harder at Tristram's shoes, his trousers, his jacket, sniffing near Tristram's hair, and then answers his own question: "Stable, obviously. Not hurt, yet something's upset -" He stops abruptly.
For the briefest moment, an unfamiliar expression crosses his face. On someone else, Tristram might have identified it as sadness or regret, but as he's never known his father to be sad or regretful about anything, he decides it must be some kind of bewilderment. There is a wide range of things that bewilder his father, such as what the point of polyester is, why Mrs Hudson will never leave the house without putting on lipstick, or how the general populace manages to feed and clothe itself. In fact, there is rarely a day that goes by on which his father doesn't express bewilderment at something. So Tristram should definitely recognise the look. This one doesn't quite match previous iterations, but he can't assign it to anything else.
It's gone as quick as it came, though, and replaced by bog standard mild annoyance. Father puts his hands on his hips and looks up at the sky, running his tongue around the inside of his lower lip. He sighs. "There is nothing wrong with what you saw John and me doing yesterday. And it has nothing to do with you. I recommend you wait for permission before opening doors from now on, however." He looks down at Tristram. "And for the record, the stable is dull and obvious. First place anyone would look. Next time, at least try and be a bit more creative. I always favoured the roof."
Then he turns and walks away, his long strides easily outstripping Tristram and leaving him no choice but to run to catch up. Just before they reach the house, Tristram looks back toward the stable. The windows are all dark.
&&&&&&
Chapter note: I just want to make it clear that the phrase 'crazy people' is Tristram's, not mine. I do not mean to make light of mental illness or disparage those who suffer from it. Nor do I intend to imply that the mentally ill should be classed with or treated like criminals.
Go to chapter twelve
Author:
Beta readers:
ruth0007, billiethepoetRating: PG-13
Relationship: John/Sherlock
Word count: ca. 93,500 when complete, this chapter 3,905 words
Summary: AU set in the universe of
nox_candida's Getting Better. John and Sherlock work together to flush out Mary's killers, and Tristram has to come to terms with what his father's new friend means for him. No series 3 spoilers (or series 1 or 2, for that matter).See chapter one for the complete header with warnings, acknowledgments, disclaimers, and notes.
Chapter 11 on AO3
It's morning. Technically. It's still pitch black out, but Tristram knows he's not going to be able to sleep any more. If he has even slept at all. He must have - he doesn't think he would have been able to lie motionless staring at nothing for six hours without drifting off. But it doesn't feel like he's slept. His whole body aches, his mind is racing, and his eyes and mouth are sticky and dry. He's not ill; he can tell the difference. It's like it was just before his father took him out of his old school, when he'd lain awake night after night trying not to think about what had happened at school the day before, or how he could possibly avoid it happening again.
He has managed to blank out the actual image of his father and Doctor Watson lying on the bed together, but the knowledge is still there. It should be okay, it really should. He knows that grown-ups tend to pair off, that it's normal, but all of the adults in his life have been single as long as he's known them: Uncle Mycroft, Grandmother, Mrs Hudson …and of course Father. He's never personally known two adults who live together the way Emily's aunts do. Is that why it makes him uncomfortable? No matter the reason, he's not in the mood to be particularly reasonable anyway. He's feeling out of sorts and hard done by. Father can barely be bothered to so much as put his hand on Tristram's shoulder, but he was touching Doctor Watson all over. He couldn't stop whatever he was doing earlier in the evening for five minutes to come and say good night to Tristram, but he pretty clearly took more than five minutes to do a whole lot more than say good night to Emily's father. And he would have taken even longer - maybe they would have even slept in the same bed all night. Like married people do.
Emily said that their fathers might get married. A dreadful thought occurs to Tristram: could they be married already? Is that why they were in bed together? Is it possible that they're all here at Llanbroc for a completely different reason, not at all related to a case? It was Tristram's own conclusion that they came here either to get away from some threat, or so that his father could investigate something. No one ever actually said that's why they came. Maybe Father and Doctor Watson just wanted to be alone. But then why did they bring Tristram and Emily? And why the bodyguard? Why did Father tell Tristram to report anything unusual to him? And so on. These are the thoughts that plague Tristram.
He can't stand lying here any longer. He checks his watch. It's almost six-thirty. Maybe someone else is up. And even if they aren't, he has to find something to do. He turns on the light and gets dressed, takes his phone from under the pillow, and goes out into the hall. The light is off under his father's door. Tristram considers seeing if Emily is awake yet, but he doesn't want to wake her or Doctor Watson - if he's even there - by knocking, and there's no way he's going to just open the door to check. Grandmother is the next possibility, but she doesn't like to be disturbed when she's in her rooms, and her door is closed too. She might have gone downstairs already, or over to her studio. He resigns himself to going downstairs on his own.
Tristram checks the kitchen, but it's empty. Too early for Mrs Bowen to be here. He pours himself a glass of milk and stirs in two spoonfuls of chocolate powder, then wanders back up to the main level with it and kicks around the green parlour and the library, but he's too antsy to settle to anything. The sun isn't up yet, but it's getting there, the blackness outside starting to give way to a softer grey. Tristram puts on his shoes and jacket and slips outside. Everything's damp, but it's not raining. In fact, the sky is all pale violet. It looks like the sun might come out later on, once the morning mist has burned off.
Tristram heads for Grandmother's studio in the old carriage house. She sometimes spends all night there. More than once, when they've been here during the summer, Grandmother has let Tristram play with her art supplies while she works, and lost all track of the time. Not really being bothered where he sleeps, Tristram simply ends up crashing on the chaise longue in the corner while Grandmother paints or throws clay or stares at a blank canvas for hours on end. It's calming, hearing the scrape of the spatula or the hum of the pottery wheel, or, when she's deep in her dark place (as she calls it), just knowing she's sitting there across the room, warm and breathing and perfectly content for Tristram to share the space with her. Tristram would actually quite like to curl up on the chaise longue in Grandmother's studio at the moment. He hopes she's there.
As he passes the old stable, he sees a little flash of light in one of the windows. He keeps his eye on the spot, but it disappears almost immediately. He looks around but doesn't see anything obvious that might have caused a reflection. The sun isn't up nearly high enough yet, even if there weren't so much mist.
He waits for a couple of minutes, motionless, to see if something else happens. It doesn't. It was probably just a trick of the eye, like a fata morgana or something. He wouldn't even think twice about it if it weren't for the person with the cigarette outside his window last night.
But now he has. He connects the flare of yellow flame from yesterday with the flash he saw just now. Maybe it's the same person, inside the stable. One of Uncle Mycroft's men. There to protect him and Father and Doctor Watson and Emily from whatever it is they need protection from. The bogeyman, probably. He understood from the beginning, of course he did, that 'the bogeyman' wasn't a supernatural creature from a fairy tale, like a troll or a ghost. He knows the difference between made-up monsters like those in the Harry Potter stories and the real-life monsters - criminals and crazy people - his father works with the police to track down.
He can see from here that the stable door is closed. Why would the bodyguard have gone into the stable anyway? It's just dirty and smelly in there. On the other hand, it's pretty cold out, and wet, especially if he was on duty all night. Maybe he wanted to sit down somewhere dry for a bit. And, apparently, he's not supposed to be smoking while on the job. At least that's what Tristram supposes his father meant when he said the man should be drawn and quartered for indulging in a nicotine fix. Tristram knows what 'drawn and quartered' means, and he doesn't think his father meant that literally. But it still suggests that the man would be in quite a bit of trouble. So it all makes sense, actually.
Tristram is pretty pleased with himself for figuring it out. He's getting chilled too, standing there in the wet grass with only his thin jacket on. He should go on to Grandmother's studio. He's bothered by a niggling doubt, though. He wants to check whether he's right. One quick look in the stable. Maybe there's nothing there after all. Just some mice, like Doctor Watson said.
He makes his way across the grass and cautiously opens the door. It's too dark inside for him to see much of anything, other than the dull grey squares of the small windows set into the walls, and for that reason it's the smell hits him first: cigarette smoke. It's somehow darker and sweeter than the acrid stuff his father smokes, but there's no mistaking it. He feels a little jolt of triumph, but doesn't have long to pat himself on the back, because a deep voice speaks out of the dimness further inside:
"Close the door carefully, you don't want to scare them."
Tristram freezes. Of course, he'd thought there was someone in here, but he hadn't actually expected it. Now he doesn't know what to do. He could leave, his observations and deductions confirmed, but on the other hand he doesn't really know yet that the voice belongs to someone Uncle Mycroft sent. Although who else would be hiding in Grandmother's stable this early in the morning? But mostly, he wonders whom he isn't meant to scare.
He takes long enough dithering that a head pokes around the side of one of the low walls dividing the space into boxes for the horses that used to reside here. The head belongs to a man with a large, flat nose and a big grin. His skin is dark like Mister Mwabila's, who sometimes gives Father a free ride in his taxi. He has a dark, close-knit hat pulled low over his forehead. He puts a finger over his lips and gestures for Tristram to come closer.
"It's a mama and three babies," he says in a low voice. He talks a little like Mister Mwabila too; or at least like someone who probably didn't grow up in London.
Tristram leaves the door open - partly for the light, and partly because no matter how friendly the man looks, he doesn't really want to be shut up in the stable with him - and takes a few steps closer. The man disappears behind the divider. Tristram is left with little choice but to step around it if he wants to see.
The man is sitting cross-legged on the floor. He's wearing dark, bulky clothes. In the shadowy gloom, Tristram can't make out much of their details, but he can see the thin white line of his cigarette balanced between the fingers of one hand. He makes a motion indicating that Tristram should sit down. Tristram stays where he is. The man takes a drag on his cigarette, then nods his head at something.
"Over there, in the corner. They're eating my breakfast, the little shits."
Now Tristram does hunker down, trying to see into the shadows where the man indicated. Then he hears it: several faint rustles, followed by a series of impossibly high squeaks. He looks at the man in delight.
"Mice?"
The man turns to the side away from Tristram and rustles around with what sounds like a plastic bag. A moment later he's holding something out. "You want to give them some? Crumble it up a bit first, mind, and don't lay it down too close to them."
Tristram takes the item - a lump of some kind of cake - and shuffles closer to the spot the sounds are coming from. And then he can see them: four grey mice, one slightly larger than the others, picking their way fastidiously around in the dirt. Tristram carefully breaks off some of the cake and dribbles it on the floor, then backs away again. The mice are suspicious and studiously avoid Tristram's gift at first, but when nothing alarming jumps out of the crumbs after a minute or so, they sniff their way over and start to nibble at them. Tristram grins at the man.
"They're eating it!" he whispers happily.
The man smiles and lifts his cigarette to his lips again. When he's blown out his mouthful of smoke, he says, "That's what they do."
When the mice start looking for more, Tristram stretches his arm out and flicks the rest of the cake bits toward them.
"You're Holmes's son, aren't you?" the man says.
Tristram nods. "And you're the bodyguard," he returns, proud of himself. He expects the man to be surprised, or incredulous, possibly even impressed, and ask how he knows that, the way people react when Father tells them something he's deduced. But the man doesn't say anything, just keeps smoking his cigarette and watching the mice. Tristram is disappointed. But then he decides the man must think someone's told him, that he didn't figure it out on his own. He feels that he should explain. "I saw you light your cigarette from outside. Same as you did last night."
The man narrows his eyes, like he's trying to remember something.
"Outside my window," Tristram says. "Wasn't that you?"
The man considers for a bit, watching Tristram, then says, "So you're on that side? Where's Watson?"
"He has Uncle Mycroft's old room."
The man grunts. "Should have known. Sharing the suite with your father. Cosy. Here." He hands Tristram some more cake. "If you make a trail you might be able to get them to come right to you. Small crumbs now, or they'll be full before they get to you and lose interest."
Tristram is eager to see if it works. He distributes the crumbs strategically in a line leading to his feet, then sits back and stays as still as he can.
"So did you tell anyone?" the man asks. "That you saw me, last night?"
Tristram bites his lip. He feels guilty now. The man is nice, and he doesn't want him to get in trouble. "My father, but... I didn't really see you, just your light. You were gone by the time he came to look. He won't know it was you, and I won't tell, I promise."
"Things could get sticky for me if anyone found out."
"I know, he said you weren't supposed to be smoking."
The man grimaces and stubs his cigarette out on the floor, then tucks the butt away in his pocket. "Damn habit, hard to break."
"My father uses nicotine patches. Maybe you could try that."
The man chuckles. "Maybe I will. Promise you won't say anything about seeing me in here either?"
"Sure," Tristram agrees, relieved that he can absolve himself in this small way.
"So, any plans for today?" the man asks.
Tristram shrugs. "Dunno." He doesn't really want to think about it. Yesterday's outing was bad enough. But if they all go somewhere again today... The prospect of seeing his father and Doctor Watson together again the way they were at the beach isn't something he thinks he could handle right now. But he's not going to have any choice, is he? Although they didn't seem to appreciate Tristram walking in on them last night, they apparently don't care who sees them kissing when they're outside. Although they probably didn't think Tristram was watching them from beneath his fringe.
All of a sudden, Tristram remembers them shaking hands for what seemed like forever that night at Emily's aunts' house, and the way they'd looked at each other for so long. Or Doctor Watson putting his hand on Father's arm and rubbing it the other time, when they came back late (Tristram had wondered what they were doing out so long, but now he thinks he knows). This has been going on so much longer, right under his nose.
On the one hand, it softens the shock, in a way, because it means that his father wasn't trying to hide something from him; Tristram was simply unobservant. He's certain that if his father really wanted to keep his relationship with Doctor Watson a secret, then no one would know about it. And they certainly wouldn't have brought him and Emily along this weekend.
On the other hand, the fact remains that his father has sectioned off yet another part of his life that Tristram isn't invited to join in on. His work takes up so much of his time already that Tristram barely sees him. Or when he does see him, he's so occupied mentally that he isn't approachable anyway. And Tristram is pretty sure that the additional time allotted to spending with Doctor Watson isn't going to come out of his father's working hours. He feels bleak. And the mice seem to have eaten their fill, or else are too distrustful, since they retreat to the shadowy edges of the enclosure and fall silent.
&&&&&&
"Are you sure he didn't get up again? Maybe follow you outside last night?" John clatters down the stairs after Sherlock.
"His bed's still warm. He hasn't been gone more than half an hour." Sherlock leaps down the stairs, taking them two and three at a time.
"Does he have any friends around here? Anyone he might have gone to?" John asks.
Sherlock stops at the bottom of the stairs and wheels around to loom over John, who skids to a halt next to him. "I know this is a difficult concept for you," he snaps, "but I am capable of narrowing down the most likely places my son might have got to."
John holds up his hands. "Just trying to help," he says and lets Sherlock stalk away.
"Daddy?" Emily is standing at the top of the stairs, still wearing her nightclothes, gripping the banister anxiously.
Mrs Holmes is standing behind her with her hands on Emily's shoulders. "What can we do to help, Sherlock?" Her voice is calm and steady.
"Go back to your room and keep the curtains drawn," he calls back over his shoulder as he disappears into the coat room.
"Emily, you can go get dressed and pack your things," John says. "Maybe you could help her, Jeanne."
Mrs Holmes nods and ushers Emily firmly away, overriding the little girl's reluctance to let her father out of her sight.
"And pack the rest of Tris's things as well," John calls after them. "Anything of his you can find!"
Sherlock comes back wearing the green windcheater from the day before and flicking through screens on his phone. "You're not coming with me," he says when John passes him to retrieve his own jacket.
John doesn't even slow his steps. "The hell I'm not. You're not rushing off half-cocked into another trap. You were glad of my help last time."
"This isn't last time. Tristram hasn't been kidnapped, he's gone off on his own."
"And how do you know that?"
Sherlock pauses and gives him a pained look over his phone. "What kidnapper would take the time to let him get dressed and fold his pajamas neatly over the foot of the bed, take him down to the kitchen for a glass of chocolate milk, let him drink it in the library, and finally put on his shoes and jacket before absconding with him?"
"Why are you so worked up then? If he's just gone for a walk round the garden-"
"John, there is someone out there -" Sherlock opens the front door and flings an arm out. "I can't prove it yet, but I know that whoever Tristram saw under his window last night was not supposed to be there. He wasn't taken from the house, but that doesn't mean that whoever is out there won't take advantage of the opportunity when they see him wandering around unprotected."
"Which is exactly why I should go with you." John pulls on his jacket and joins Sherlock at the door.
"No, it's exactly what they would expect. Which is why you will stay here with my mother and your daughter, and make sure that neither of them ends up being an additional opportunity."
"We can have one of Mycroft's men stay here-"
"Do you trust them? With your daughter's life? Can you say with one hundred percent certainty that Moran's people didn't slip a ringer in?" Sherlock points up at the ceiling. His phone beeps and he looks down at it. "It's your call. I can't stay and argue it, I've got Tristram's signal." He turns and walks out the door.
&&&&&&
"Tristram!"
Tristram jerks around at the sound of his father's voice. He's charging across the lawn. He doesn't look best pleased. Tristram stops on the path and waits. He left the bodyguard back in the stable, promising again not to give him away. And the man said he'd be sure and watch out extra hard for Tristram today and make sure nothing happens to him, so Tristram thinks it's a fair deal.
"I told you not to leave the house on your own," Father says as soon as he's in speaking range.
Tristram's heart plummets. He remembers now: Father told him not to go out of the house without either him or Doctor Watson. Not even with Grandmother. It simply hadn't occurred to him that morning, not with everything else he was thinking about. "I forgot," he says in a small voice.
"Do you imagine I make up these rules for my own benefit?" Father continues. His eyes are big and angry.
Tristram doesn't think his father really expects an answer, but he shakes his head because he doesn't think that at all. He knows it's to protect him, just like he'd been told not to go with anyone but Doctor Watson after school, and he went with Emily's Aunt Claire and ended up in the warehouse and... Tristram's stomach twists more than a little uncomfortably. He feels absolutely wretched.
His father must pick up on Tristram's discomfort - hardly surprising, that - because the lines between his eyebrows go from rigid to wrinkled, and he puts a hand on Tristram's shoulder. "Where have you-" he mutters, looking even harder at Tristram's shoes, his trousers, his jacket, sniffing near Tristram's hair, and then answers his own question: "Stable, obviously. Not hurt, yet something's upset -" He stops abruptly.
For the briefest moment, an unfamiliar expression crosses his face. On someone else, Tristram might have identified it as sadness or regret, but as he's never known his father to be sad or regretful about anything, he decides it must be some kind of bewilderment. There is a wide range of things that bewilder his father, such as what the point of polyester is, why Mrs Hudson will never leave the house without putting on lipstick, or how the general populace manages to feed and clothe itself. In fact, there is rarely a day that goes by on which his father doesn't express bewilderment at something. So Tristram should definitely recognise the look. This one doesn't quite match previous iterations, but he can't assign it to anything else.
It's gone as quick as it came, though, and replaced by bog standard mild annoyance. Father puts his hands on his hips and looks up at the sky, running his tongue around the inside of his lower lip. He sighs. "There is nothing wrong with what you saw John and me doing yesterday. And it has nothing to do with you. I recommend you wait for permission before opening doors from now on, however." He looks down at Tristram. "And for the record, the stable is dull and obvious. First place anyone would look. Next time, at least try and be a bit more creative. I always favoured the roof."
Then he turns and walks away, his long strides easily outstripping Tristram and leaving him no choice but to run to catch up. Just before they reach the house, Tristram looks back toward the stable. The windows are all dark.
&&&&&&
Chapter note: I just want to make it clear that the phrase 'crazy people' is Tristram's, not mine. I do not mean to make light of mental illness or disparage those who suffer from it. Nor do I intend to imply that the mentally ill should be classed with or treated like criminals.
Go to chapter twelve