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Chapter Text

The streets of London swelled with the kind of febrile energy that only arrived after dark—slick with the aftermath of a cold drizzle, reflecting fractured constellations of streetlamps and signage in tremulous puddles underfoot. Eleanor Grayson moved through it like a shadow—tightly wound, collar drawn up, her breath shallow and uneven. The city breathed around her in mechanical rhythms: the hydraulic hiss of a bus door, the impatient blare of horns, the scatter of footsteps on wet pavement. Beneath it all, above it, at times, were the voices.

They began subtly, like the rustle of papers behind closed doors or the reverberations of forgotten conversations echoing down stairwells. At first, Eleanor mistook them for memory or imagination, the ghosts of sound that clung to the brain after a long, overstimulated day. These were not whispers tucked neatly away in recollection, however, they were intrusive, insistent—shadows with vocal cords, with purpose.

     She knows. 

             Left again.

                    She left it again. 

                              Why didn’t she look?

            Look.

                        Look.

                                    LOOK.

She tightened her grip on the strap of her satchel. The leather felt damp under her fingers, though she wasn’t sure whether it was the rain or her own perspiration. She turned the corner at Euston Road, trying to orient herself—focus on physical space, on grounded markers. Atmosphere: a kebab shop with flickering signage, a red postbox under streetlight, a man walking his dog, the leash taut, the animal sniffing at the base of a lamppost. Normal. Mundane.

They’re watching you. 

       Say something.

             Say it.

                  Now.

                       Stop pretending you don’t hear us.

                               Hello?

                                     Hear us.

                                            Hear us!

                                                They do, they see it.

                                                                See it?

                                                                        LOOK!

“N-not now,” she breathed, so softly she wasn’t sure she had spoken aloud.

The shadows began to ripple around here. Faces in the periphery shifted, elongated. One woman’s eyes seemed too large. A man’s lips moved, but the words that emerged weren’t his. Eleanor’s vision blurred at the edges before it’d snapp back into focus, like here eyes were on a string, a loop.

Hyperreal.
Too bright.
The world felt like it had tilted several degrees off-center.

Her stride faltered. People passed her without pausing, but their proximity scraped at her skin like sandpaper.

A couple laughed—sharp, piercing. Someone brushed her arm and it sent a jolt of static through her entire nervous system.

The voices liked it, in fact they rose in chorus.

      Behind you. 

            Behind you. 

                 BEHIND YOU.

She spun around.

Nothing—only a wet expanse of sidewalk with a cyclist, disappearing into the dark.

Eleanor’s breathing quickened. The cold London air bit at her throat as she pulled her coat tighter, knuckles blanching. Her ears rang with sound—some real, most imagined.
She couldn’t tell anymore. It was all overlapping: the grind of tires against slick asphalt, the hiss of unseen whispers, the pounding of her heart.

She stumbled toward the edge of the pavement and braced herself against the façade of a shuttered pharmacy. Its security grille vibrated under her trembling hand but the metal, the metal run in her head like bells. She pressed her forehead against it, screwing her eyes shut, “Quiet,” she whispered. Then louder, “G-god…s-s-shut up, shut up, SHUT UP.”

Someone across the street paused, near her a pedestrian quickened their pace.

The air seemed to hold its breath.

        Come on, say it again. 

              They think you’re mad. 

                     You ARE mad, dear.

                                  Say it again, come now.

                                            Say it.

                                                   SAY IT. 

“QUIET!”

Her scream fractured the night.
Heads turned.
A car slowed.
A phone was raised, camera open—somewhere, a dog barked.

Eleanor backed away from the storefront, her chest heaving, eyes wide. She could feel the heat of their stares even if she couldn’t meet them, see them. Hollow doses of mortification curled through her ribs like knives, “I-I-I’m sorry,” she gasped, though to whom she wasn’t sure.

Chapter Text

The rain came down in relentless torrents that evening, drenching the cobbled streets of London and rendering them naught but glistening mirrors of fractured light beneath the flickering gas lamps. Inside the doors of 221B, the atmosphere was warm but restless. Sherlock stood by the hearth, violin under his chin, drawing long, contemplative notes from the strings—each phrase echoing slightly in the cluttered flat. The rhythmic ticking of the clock filled the silence between his playing, punctuated only by the occasional crackle from the dying embers in the hearth. He’d finished reading, now, opting to compose but his bow was hovering, paused mid-stroke as John Watson re-entered the living room, a stack of files tucked under one arm.

John dropped the folders onto the table with a soft thud. "Picked these up from Lestrade, got a fourth, potential case from a bloke at Bart’s who swears someone’s swapped a patient file with coded messages."

"Boring," Sherlock intoned, plucking at the strings without looking up.

"You haven’t even read them."

"Don’t need to," Sherlock quipped. 

John sighed, flipping open the top file anyway. Sherlock looked disheveled—not in the careless way he often dressed, but in a subtler, fraying-at-the-edges sort of way. His hair was tousled about with less precision than usual, his shirt half-buttoned beneath his trademark, navy dressing gown. He was relatively quiet, second of all, not to mention there was a deepening crease between his brows that hadn’t quite faded from days previous. The violin in his hands moved with elegance, "Fine.” John sighed, “Missing person—twenty-eight-year-old freelance photographer, found dead near Sussex. Left behind a note, but not his own writing, locked apartment, and a…cat?"

"Staged," Sherlock muttered. "Next."

"Alright…What about an industrial espionage? Some executive’s laptop went missing, and now—"

"No."

John glanced up. "You didn’t even let me finish that one."

Sherlock lowered the violin and turned; eyes bright with the mild frustration of a man starved of worthwhile challenge. "John, please. If I wanted to chase missing MacBooks and neurotic office-based romances between estranged boyfriends, I’d work in IT." He sighed, "Corpses, at least, complain less."

The bow resumed its path across the strings, a sharp arpeggio fluttering before a series of double stops, scales. John shook his head with a reluctant smile. Sherlock had always been like this in lulls between cases—restless, acerbic, and impossible to please. He’d been prepared to check his emails, again, or Sherlock’s, but the evening’s calm was disrupted, thankfully, by an unexpected knock at the downstairs door. Not a decisive rap, nor the urgent pounding of a desperate client—this was softer, hesitant. Three light taps, then a pause, as though the visitor were reconsidering their decision.

John glanced at Sherlock, who had now poised himself in his chair with the violin in his lap; his expression was impassive, on the surface, but his eyes went to John’s in subtle recognition of the sound.

"Expecting anyone?" He asked, tone light.

Sherlock gave the smallest shake of his head. "A case, it seems.”

John rolled his eyes, rising to his feet. He had long stopped expecting civility from Sherlock, but that didn’t mean he had to indulge his flatmate’s penchant for childishness—not all the time, anyway. John maneuvered his way to their door, calling down for the guest to come up as he moved on toward the kitchen. Tea, tea would be good right now.

The knock echoed again.

Then again.

John peaked around the threshold to his flatmate who remained where he was, bow poised just above the strings, eyes distant and disinterested. The sound of the knock had clearly registered, but he had made no effort to investigate—or even acknowledge it. "You know," John’s tone was dry, verging on sarcastic, "Most people would answer the door when someone knocks."

Sherlock responded with a disinterested flick of his wrist, “Yes, but you're closer.”

With a string of curses the shorter went on toward the stairwell, prepared to let their guest in but he gave pause, surprised by the guest who—it seemed—did finally let themselves in. When he met her, the woman had raised her hand to knock on the door, their flat door, stopped in the action when John swung it open. It was a lean, brown-haired woman with long, wavy hair, probably in her…thirties, judging by the look of her.

Her windbreaker, though well-kept, bore the marks of wear at the seams, its muted navy fabric doubly dark, damp from the storms outside. Her eyes—a bright, blue-grey despite the deep hollows beneath them—were wide when she met John’s. Rain had soaked both she and her layers, an accompaniment to the strands of hair still clinging to her strikingly pallid face. When she spoke, her voice was barely audible over the hum of the hallway heater, "D-Dr. Watson? I—I'm l-l-looking for S-Sherlock Holmes."

John’s instincts bristled before his mind could fully articulate why. There was something about her posture, the way her gaze flitted anxiously over her shoulder before settling on him—something unmistakably troubled. He’d seen desperation before, but her reaction was appealing more to his clinical side…was she manic, perhaps? "Ah. Yes. Yes, of course.” John stepped aside quickly, ushering her in. “Come in."

She hesitated only briefly before nodding and stepping over the threshold; though in all fairness she didn’t move very far.

Sherlock, himself, had yet to move though his fingers had continued to idly trace patterns on the violin neck. His expression remained unreadable but John noticed the subtle shift in his eyes—a flicker of recognition, not to the woman herself, but of the state she was in.

Disheveled. Worn. Scared.

Client.

Once she was inside, door closed, Eleanor’s presence seemed to settle like dust in the room. Her coat dripped quietly onto the floorboards, pooling little puddles of water beneath her. When no one bid to speak, John cleared his throat rather loudly. “Right…Well. I’ll make us some tea, shall I?”

“No caffeine, John.” Sherlock's gaze hadn't wavered from the woman’s.

“Ah. Right.”

“Biscuits too, if we have them.” He added absently. As the Doctor opened his mouth to ask why, the detective went on, “Our client hasn’t slept. Near…fourty-three hours, now, judging by the dilation of her pupils, the red capillaries spidering from the corners of her eyes.” He paused for a moment, “She hasn’t eaten in at least twenty of those hours—likely longer. Pale lips. Glassy eyes, slow reaction time—judging by how long it took her to lower her hand from the door. Dehydration, based on the seven times she’s licked her rather dry, cracked lips and swallowed, at least since entering.”

His eyes moved, clinical and swift, but without cruelty. “Your coat is soaked but the hem is clean—its obvious you walked here but in doing so, you avoided puddles. Someone hyperaware of her environment, then. Odd, given London has notoriously uneven cobble sidewalks—it’d take effort to avoid getting anything on your clothes, especially in this rain. Paranoid, then, hypervigilant.”

“Your shoes—modest, practical—but the laces are done too tightly. Re-tied recently then, approximately…four times. A self-soothing habit, then.” Sherlock’s gaze narrowed. “Fraying on the index and middle fingers of your gloves suggests repeated stress contact—biting, or rubbing. Likely a tic.” He lowered the violin to his side, tilting his head. “You haven’t made eye contact since stepping inside. Not out of modesty—you initiated contact, but now that you're here you're shrinking from it. Anticipated dismissal? Well, that brings us to the obvious question,” Sherlock turned his full attention to Eleanor, eyes piercing and unreadable. “Well?”

John seemed to suddenly recall how to breathe, making a rather audible intake of breath before he spoke, “Sorry…Obvious, Sherlock?”

“Our client, John.”

Eleanor took a breath but the words didn’t come immediately. Her fingers flexed around the strap of a worn, leather bag on her shoulder, “I-I apologize f-for the l-l-late hour.” She stammered, eyes downcast. "I...I j-just d-don't know where t-t-to go w-with this, w-where to start..."

John watched her for a moment, his professional instincts kicking in. Her speech, it wasn’t just anxiety, the pattern, prolonged consonants, broken cadence—it took visible effort for her to form each syllable. A speech disorder, then, likely developmental, possibly exacerbated by stress—which she was clearly under.

He glanced at Sherlock then, catching the way he was cataloging details, not brushing her off—he was watching how she moved, spoke, hesitated. John surmised he’d likely understand her speech was because of this disorder, not anxiety, thankfully, thus it was with a small sigh that John turned and made for the kitchen, finally surrendering to the idea of tea.

"The beginning usually suffices," Sherlock remarked dryly, though there was an edge of patience beneath the sharpness.

"I—" She clenched her jaw, as though fighting against her own hesitation. "I-I’m n-not…expecting anything,” Eleanor swallowed, “A-a-as far as h-help, but I…I h-heard about y-y…y-you and thought…if a-anyone would listen, M-Mr. Holmes, it would be you.”

Her voice trailed off into the heavy quiet of the room. For a long beat, neither man spoke. Eleanor’s fingers tightened around the strap of her bag again, her knuckles bone-white against the leather. She didn’t look up—didn’t dare to—but her posture betrayed the tension gathering at the base of her neck, like a string pulled too taut.

Sherlock crossed one of his legs atop the other, placing his violin down on the coffee table beside him. The sound it made—barely audible as the wood touched the surface—still felt loud in the silence left behind. “And what is it,” he said, tone leveled but deliberate, “That no one else has listened to?”

Just then, John returned with three mismatched mugs in hand, a chipped plate of biscuits balanced atop them. He glanced between the other two, reading the tension in an instant. “Right,” he said, carefully setting everything down. “Well. Uhm, tea’s sorted.”

He passed a mug to Eleanor without a word and she accepted, tucking it to her chest with both hands—gripping it more for stability than warmth. She nodded faintly in thanks, eyes still fixed on the uneven floorboards near her feet, “I…” She shook her head, as though rejecting the first dozen ways she might start, “It w-was a s-s-small thing. I thought it was j-j-just stress. L-lack of sleep…”

John sat, pen and notepad now quietly resting in his lap. He didn’t interrupt, only exchanged a look with Sherlock—one that asked, gently: take it easy on this one. He was listening as both doctor and man now and though he hadn’t known her more than five minutes, Watson already recognized she was one with…baggage.

She scoffed, “I-I-I’m sure it’s q-quite clear t-t-to someone like y-you that I-I’ve m-mental h-health issues.” Eleanor gestured to her mouth as if it alone were an example, “E-everything I’ve r-r-read i-indicates m…m-my problem mayb-be caused from sev-severe depressive d-disorder—” She swallowed, “I-I h-have it, yes, b-but I-I’ve also been h-hearing a-auditory h-hallucinations f-for months, now, s-sounds, p-pieces.”

John’s brow furrowed with gentle concern as he glanced up from his notepad. “Before you continue I…just realized we’ve yet to ask your name,” He began, “You are?”

She hesitated for a beat— “Amicia Eleanor Leanne Greyson,” she said fully, “B-but I-I go by Eleanor.”

Sherlock’s eyes flicked to John, then back to her. “Middle name,” he said aloud, more to himself than anyone else. “You introduce yourself by your second name, not uncommon among people with difficult or aristocratic first names, but—”

“Right, well, Eleanor—” John stressed, “You said severe depressive disorder—you’ve been to a doctor, then?”

“Of course she has, John.” Sherlock said, not unkind but unfiltered.

Watson shot him a look—a pointed one, that needed no words.

The detective exhaled through his nose, correcting himself. “When were you diagnosed? And by whom?” His voice was still clinical, but the edge had dulled slightly. “A list of official diagnoses would be helpful.”

Eleanor shifted in her seat, “O-one was NHS, j-just a GP. He said it w-was s-stress. Gave me s-something to sleep. Didn’t l-l-listen very long.” Her voice thinned further as she went on.

“T-the second w-was a private psychiatrist, s-scraped money t-together f-for the first visit. H-he said I m-may be exhibiting signs of sch-schizoaffective disorder. W-wanted me on lithium.” She paused, jaw tightening. “I didn’t go b-b-back.”

“And the third?” Sherlock asked.

She swallowed, voice nearly a whisper now. “C-community crisis t-team. Said I w-wasn’t ‘s-s-suicidal enough’ to be seen l-l-long term.”

“And yet you are. Still, it seems.”

That made her flinch, visibly.

John shot Sherlock another look—warning, this time, but Sherlock didn’t soften. Not entirely. He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers as his eyes fixed on Eleanor with forensic precision.

On the surface, she presented to him a contradiction. The stammer and reserved body language suggested a woman deeply uncomfortable in her own skin, socially anxious to the point of paralysis. But her vocabulary, the structure of her phrasing—even beneath the halting delivery—betrayed intelligence, education, clarity. Her posture was guarded, but not collapsed. She was fractured, yes, but not incoherent. There was discipline beneath the disorder.

Sherlock’s head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing. “Why come to me, Miss Greyson?” he asked. “If what you need is a diagnosis, a prescription, perhaps institutional care—why not seek out another doctor?”

She swallowed, “I r-r-read about y-you, M-Mr. Holmes, h-how you s-see things n-n-no one else does. Y-you don’t b-b-believe people, y-y-you prove them.”

“If all you want is help staying alive, why come to a consulting detective?”

“B-b-because if I am mad, y-y-you’ll be the one to unabashedly t-t-tell me why.”

Eleanor’s shoulders had tensed—it was obvious she was bracing for him to say something cutting, but Sherlock didn’t speak. Not immediately, anyway, his eyes stayed locked on her face, scanning every minute shift—jaw tension, eye movement, the tremor in her right hand. John, still seated across from her, across from Sherlock, watched them both. He could feel it: the weight of the pause, the subtle shift in Sherlock’s posture—he must have heard something in her answer.

John leaned forward, gentler now, “You mentioned having hallucinations,” he began, treading carefully, “What are they like? Can you describe them for us?”

“They’re…” She exhaled slowly, as though forcing herself to wade into waters she’d long avoided. “V-v-voices. M-mostly. Sometimes it’s s-s-sounds. Footsteps. Doors. R-radio static.”

“When they happen, do they speak to you directly?” John asked.

“S-sometimes,” she said. “Not always. O-o-often they t-talk over each other. D-different tones, g-g-genders. I d-don’t always understand them, not fully. It’s like—” her eyes narrowed slightly, searching for words, “Like hearing a c-conversation through a w-w-wall. Muffled.”

He nodded slowly, letting her take her time, “Do they ever use your name? Say things you recognize?”

Eleanor’s fingers tightened around the edge of her coat. “Y-yes. N-not always, b-but… sometimes. Th-they know things. P-p-personal things.”

A pause passed. John’s eyes flicked to Sherlock, who hadn’t moved but whose expression had shifted—thoughtful, sharper now.

“Any visual hallucinations?”

“S-s-shadows. M-movement out of the corner of my eye.”

John glanced at Sherlock, then back at Eleanor. “Henry Knight,” he said quietly, thoughtful. “Baskerville, remember? The hallucinations, the disorientation…he’d had therapy-induced recall? Trauma surfacing in controlled bursts.”

Sherlock didn’t look away from Eleanor, but his tone shifted—cool, precise. “Henry’s hallucinations were episodic, cultivated in part by suggestive reinforcement. Hallucinogens, emotional triggers, environmental engineering, conditioning.” His voice dropped slightly, not unkind, but unflinching. “This—” He gestured toward Eleanor with a slight incline of his head, “—has no containment. It’s not episodic, as Henry’s had been, it’s constant.”

Eleanor looked up at him in surprise, opening her mouth, “And before you say, yes. I know you’re hearing them now. Likely more than one. This is the first you’ve looked up since you started speaking, at least properly. Eye contact requires focus. Isolation of attention but your eyes keep shifting—left, down, right again. The cadence is erratic. Manic,” He looks over at his flatmate, “John noticed as well but he was too kind to say so—”

John looks up from his notebook in equal shock, “I…was under the impression it was social anxiety, myself. Plenty of people don’t make eye contact, Sherlock.”

The detective continued, “That, as well, but it’s quite clear she’s responding to stimuli that aren’t in this room, or least ones that don’t exist.”

“A-as I said, I-I’ve b-been t-told it’s s-schizoaffective,” Eleanor added, more to her knees than the men. “But n-nothing they’ve g-given me has m-made it stop.”

John frowned, pen still in hand, but now unmoving. “We can look over what they’ve prescribed you later, but…it might be helpful to know the things do they say, Eleanor?” he asked, “When they talk to you, the hallucinations—what’s the tone? Are the voices aggressive? Threatening?”

Her lips pressed into a thin line, her eyes flicking toward the wall behind Sherlock before she forced them back down to her lap. She couldn’t see anything, this time, yet, but the sounds seemed to be coming from there, the wall:

   You’re making a mistake.

          Static.

                They’ll lock you up—who wouldn’t, look at you?

        Next on BBC Live...

                       Why would they help you? Help yourself, end it. End it now.

…Explosion…

Get out. Leave.

The voices surged like a wave cresting inside her skull—layered, distorted. Some were whispering and others shouting, all overlapping into a cacophony barely separable from those in the room. Her grip on the tea mug trembled visibly now, the porcelain rattling softly against the table as she tried to put it down.

“S-s-sorry.” She whispered, “S-sometimes it’s j-just noise. Like l-listening to a dozen c-c-conversations on different radio f-frequencies, at the same time.” The woman paused to swallow, “I…I-I know by now t-that t-t-they’re trying to m-make me forget what’s r-real when they do this.”

John leaned back slightly, concern deepening. “Have you ever acted on anything they said?”

Eleanor didn’t answer right away but her silence was answer enough. Sherlock filled it, “You have. Not violently, or you'd have been sectioned—unless you have,” He prodded, eyebrow raised. “…Ah. Once.” Sherlock answered himself, “But you’ve followed their instructions. Changed your routine, avoided streets, walled yourself up.”

Her eyes darted up to his—just for a second—and then away again. “C-Correct again, Mr. Holmes.”

John leaned back into his chair, tapping the end of his pen against the notepad in thought. He glanced up at Sherlock, a question already forming in his expression. “So,” The Doctor began, glancing to the clock. “It’s neigh…midnight, now—so what’s the plan? We can’t exactly send her back out into that.”

Sherlock didn’t answer immediately. He stood, crossed to the mantle, and adjusted a stack of letters that didn’t need adjusting. “You’re a medical man, John.” He stated the fact with the same cool certainty as if noting the weather. “She hasn’t eaten.”

Watson paused, “Right. Yes. Dinner first.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and started scrolling through delivery options. “Takeaway, then. Something warm. Soup. Curry, maybe?”

Sherlock didn’t reply, but the faintest incline of his head served as agreement.

Eleanor, still clutching the edge of the table with trembling fingers, finally looked up again, slowly, uncertainly. Her gaze darted between the two men. They had changed position—Sherlock now standing, John absorbed in his phone and for a moment, the entire room reoriented in her mind. They were human. Just men. Tired ones, perhaps. Familiar in their own odd ways. One sharp, too observant. The other quiet, caring and reserved.

They're pretending. Playing a part.
                  He’s the doctor. He pities you.

                           He’s taking notes like you’re a specimen.

         “UNSTABLE MUSICIAN CAUSES PANIC IN WESTMINSTER”

                You think food will fix this? They’ll poison it. Make you worse.'

                                          This isn’t safety. This is stage one.

        Tick… tick… boom…

“WOMAN HEARS VOICES, VANISHES FROM HOSPITAL HOURS LATER”

“Eleanor?” John’s voice cut through the rising storm in her mind. She looked at him, “We’re trying to sort something for dinner. Do you have any allergies?”

She hesitated but shook her head no.

The Doctor gave her a quiet nod in return, looking back to his mobile as her eyes went back to observing, cataloguing. Both men were objectively above average in appearance, as the media and forums had suggested. She could see it clearly now, in a moment of surreal clarity: John Watson, solidly built, kind-faced, his features softened by age and empathy. The faint shadow of exhaustion beneath his eyes only made him look more dependable somehow, more…compassionate. He watched her not as a threat, but as a physician might watch a patient who’d come in already bleeding—

Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand, all sharp lines and pale skin, as if someone had sculpted him, made him from marble. His eyes were too bright and his stillness born of precision—it looked like he was always biding his time, thinking, but his reactions were colder, more removed. Beautiful, as most people labelled him, though to her he didn’t feel safe to look at, observe. He was dangerous, in his intelligence, his calculation, vision—

Her attention drifted outward, scanning the flat.

It was an odd room. Lived-in but chaotic, like a museum of thought left mid-curation. Books piled on books—some in cases, some teetering on window ledges, interspersed between scientific articles pinned alongside sheet music. An entire wall of clipped headlines and scrawled deductions lay to the East and West of the room, tied together with sticky notes or yarn, depending. An expensive, antique violin lay on the table—intriguing, probably worth 20k quid, on a bad day. There was a human skull near the mirror, seated and watching toward a knife which had been plunged through a few papers beside it. Tea mugs lay next to a microscope, vials, accompanied by a pile of unopened post, newspapers. The scent of old tobacco and something chemical lingered beneath the firewood, though it wasn’t necessarily unpleasant to smell.

You shouldn’t be here.

            Watson will call them. He already knows.

He’s writing it down—diagnosing you, you know he is.

            They’ll put you somewhere white. With locked doors.

                        Needles. Cold beds. Screaming.

You know that sound.

            You could beat them to it?

                    Slit.

                       Drop.

                            Fall.

                               Simple.

Her eyes went to the door.
It would take less than five seconds to reach it—less, if she didn’t look back.

She forced herself to sit a little straighter, pressing her lips together in a weak attempt at composure. “A-actually,” Eleanor began, the stammer softening just slightly with effort, “M-may I use your r-restroom?”

John looked up from his phone and blinked, nodding, “Oh. Of course, yeah. It’s just down the hall, second door on the left.”

Sherlock’s gaze slid to her like a blade as she moved.

“Ah, do you need anything?” John added. “Clean towel, change of clothes?”

She gave a quick, muted shake of her head. “N-no. I’ll only be a m-minute.”

Eleanor stood slowly, knees stiff from how tightly she’d been holding herself together. Her boots echoed faintly on the floorboards as she crossed to the hallway, eyes locked forward.

He let you go too easily.

Do it now.

Do it before they change their minds.

She turned down the hall, floorboards creaking as she went.

First door, second door.
With a frown the door clicked shut behind her, which she locked with trembling fingers. This had been a whim—or what had felt like one at the time. The name Sherlock Holmes had drifted into conversation at the back of a rehearsal hall more than once. Stories shared in low voices between cellists and percussionists, usually between gripes about conductors and missed entrances.

Take something.

Break the mirror.

Shatter. Cut. Quiet.

They’ll never expect it in here.

Quick. Easy. Safe.

They won’t be able to follow you if you do it right.

She pressed both palms to the sink, willing the porcelain to stay cool, stay real.

A genius detective, that’s what everyone had called him.
The man who unraveled impossible murders and returned home by teatime. Someone had mentioned the blog—John Watson’s blog—and she’d read it. All of it. Over and over.

The case of the banker had gripped her, the woman in pink, the man who challenged Holmes, discredited him. Something about the tone of the blog—the clarity of observation, the sense that no one was ever fully invisible—it’d lingered with her despite the…depth of her episodes.

Pick something sharp.

     Something heavy.

          End it before they do.

               They will, you know.

                          Everyone does.

                                    Do you want that again, the white room?

She had convinced herself, perhaps foolishly, that if someone like him could see through the noise, then maybe Sherlock could see her too; he had the ability to tell her what was wrong, what wasn’t. The possibility that maybe—just maybe—he’d understand was…No. No, right now she was in the claustrophobic hush of a stranger’s bathroom, voices screeching inside her skull like a runaway train. In the mirror, her reflection—

They wanted control.
They wanted chaos.
Pain, though—that they respected. It’d be sharp, immediate, real. She’d discovered years ago that a cut deep enough, a wound sharp enough—and off they’d pop, the voice, they’d quiet down. Not permanently, of course, but it’d sometimes be long enough to breathe, long enough to remember who she was.

She moved without thinking, her hands efficient despite the tremor. She found a glass perfume bottle on the shelf above the sink—weighty. Decorative, not particularly sharp, but the edge of the crystal cap cover...

There. Yes. That will do nicely.

                        You know what works.

                                    You’re not scared. You’ve done worse.

            Do it, deep enough to matter.

                        Quick enough they won’t notice.      

            Go on.

                        Go.

                                    DO IT.

She sat on the edge of the bathtub as she braced her coat to the side, rolling up the sleeve of her left arm.

No.

She paused. No.

Her thigh.

Less visible, ergo less suspicious.

Her breath shook as she pushed up her skirt, revealing pale skin beneath dark, brown tights. She didn’t think—couldn’t afford to. The bottle cap’s edge bit through nylon into skin, a wound that dug deep on its own, but she drove it in again.

Once.

Twice.

A third, deeper.

The pain bloomed like fire under the skin. Her lips parted in a silent gasp, and the voices—they went still.
Just like that.
Just like that and it was a clean, vacuum of silence.

She tore tissue from the dispenser, fumbling to staunch the bleeding despite her sticky, clumsy hands. Eleanor pressed tightly, wrapping herself with layers of tissue and part of the hand towel, pulling her layers back down over it. The warmth kept spreading but it was slower now, manageable.

The knock came just as she washed her hands. “Eleanor, you alright?”

“Y-yes!” She called, splashing water on her face. Cold water, blends with the wet hair, clothes.

When Eleanor stepped out of the bathroom the first thing that struck her was the warmth. The smell of food had filled the flat—spiced steam, it seems, drifting in from the kitchen where John had unpacked containers onto the cluttered table. He glanced up as she emerged, giving her a gentle, encouraging smile, the kind that didn’t seem to try too hard.

“You alright?” he asked, tone casual as he opened a container. “We’ve got tikka, biryani, and saag paneer. I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I may have overordered.”

Eleanor nodded once, not trusting her voice yet. She stood quietly off to the side, her coat still wrapped tightly around her despite the heat in the flat. Her leg ached beneath the fabric—warm, raw, and wet—but the silence in her mind was holding, still heavy like fog after a storm.

John handed her a plate and a fork, gesturing to the table. “Help yourself. The rice is good, not too spicy.”

She stepped forward slowly, movements calculated as she took a small spoonful of biryani. The smell alone turned her stomach but she forced herself to hold the plate, to at least look like she was going to eat, enjoy it. She caught Sherlock out of the corner of her eye—still by the mantle, standing, arms folded loosely across his chest as he stared down at the fireplace.

John took his own plate to his chair, offering Eleanor a look as he did so, “So, what is it that you do, Eleanor?”

“M-m-musician.” She replied quietly, eyes glued to her food.

“Oh yeah?” he said, genuinely interested. Eleanor noticed him glance briefly at Sherlock—likely thinking about the violin he’d been holding earlier—but said nothing of it. “What do you play?”

“Clarinet.”

John gave a humored chuckle, “Ah. I used to as well, back in secondary school. Bloody awful at it—could never get past ‘Three Blind Mice’ without squeaking through half the notes.”

That drew the faintest upward twitch at the corner of Eleanor’s mouth.

“How long have you been playing?”

She hesitated, “S-since…I was eight, I believe.”

“Serious, then. You do it professionally?”

A beat passed.

“I’m with the L-London Chamber O-Orchestra,” she said finally, quietly. There was something bittersweet in her voice, like remembering a version of herself that belonged more to the stage than the present. “A-a-acting principal, at the moment.”

John blinked. “Really? Wow. That’s bloody incredible.”

She shook her head slightly. “J-j-just for the season. Filling in f-for the permanent principal while she’s on maternity leave. I t-t-teach sometimes too. M-masterclasses, clinics.” She trailed off, then added, “I w-w-work in arts administration. Full-time.”

“Let me guess,” Watson began, “Long days behind a desk, evenings rehearsing?”

She took a slow bite of rice, stomach turning, but she managed to force it down, “S-something like that.”

The conversation drifted easily for a while, moving in and out of music and memory. John kept things light—mentioning Rosie’s latest teething phase, a curry shop he’d gotten food poisoning from in Brixton, even an awkward school concert he once endured where a rogue trombone player had stolen the show for all the wrong reasons. Eleanor responded in half-smiles, brief nods, the occasional quiet, humorless chuckle. She didn’t offer much in the way of conversation but she listened, and listening seemed enough to keep the thread going. The flat settled into a kind of fragile peace, the kind that held as long as no one looked at it too closely.

Eventually, Eleanor set her mostly-untouched plate down and shifted forward in her seat, coat still wrapped tightly around her. “I sh-should go,” she murmured, barely louder than the quiet tick of the wall clock. “You’ve both been…k-k-kind, and I a-appreciate you l-l-listening to me, b-but I feel I’ve i-i-imposed upon you a-a problem u-unfit for yo-your business.”

John looked up immediately, shaking his head. “Hold on—we’ve barely started. You said you’ve been prescribed things, yeah?” He looked to Sherlock then back to her, “Maybe we can find a way to track what triggers the voices—writing them down, maybe. Documenting patterns. Sherlock?”

Both John and Eleanor looked at him.

He gestured vaguely to the empty containers and half-finished plates. “The tea, the food, the small talk—it’s very hospitable, John, but not why she walked through the door—as the lady said.” His eyes settled on Eleanor then, “He is right, however, you’ve yet to tell us your case.”

“I—I have, Mr. H-Holmes, I—”

“Clarinetist,” Sherlock continued. “London Chamber Orchestra. Formerly based in New York, relocated for sabbatical. Recently featured in the news, February 2^nd, if I recall.” He paused. “Woman, approximately in her early. To mid-thirties, was taken under psychiatric care after stepping into traffic in Westminster last month. In the report you claimed it was an accident—"

Her face went pale.

“Therefore—” His voice tightened just slightly, “It’s not just stress, though I’ve no doubt it plays a role. Chemical imbalance is a tempting answer, as you’ve alluded to—it always is.” He stepped away from the fireplace now, slow, deliberate, folding his arms as he faced her directly. “To John, just a moment ago, you said your father was a neurosurgeon?”

She gave the faintest nod.

“Leanne Greyson,” Sherlock continued, flashing his cellphone to the group. During their earlier conversations he must have been busy, “Former DARPA consultant. Specialized in experimental memory patterning, cognitive tethering, non-invasive neural rewriting—very promising work in theory. But ethically…murky. Went quiet in 2013 after a funding freeze. Killed in a hit-and-run five years ago. Unsolved.”

Eleanor’s fork clattered softly against the edge of her plate—how?

His gaze went to the plate then back to her, “He left almost no digital trail. Papers disappeared. Academic ties severed and yet—he had a daughter. A daughter, as it turned out, that’d likely been exposed to years of unethical, clinical trial-adjacent behavior.”

John sat forward, brows knitting, “You’re…saying he experimented on her?”

“I’m saying,” Sherlock stressed, “That he may have conditioned her—intentionally or not, though I’d favor the latter. Children mimic. Children learn under pressure. If he was already trialing early neural feedback systems it would have been easiest to test basic cognitive recall models at home. Routine, stimulus, reaction. It wouldn’t have looked like an experiment, on the outside—especially not to a child.”

If possible, her face would have gone alabaster.

“But if he was exploring artificial mnemonic tethering—” Sherlock moved toward the window, hands tucked behind his back, now, pacing slowly— “Then it's possible that what our dear client is experiencing now isn’t justhallucination. It’s…memory being destabilized by something in her present. A sound. A word. A color. A tone. Something she’d been exposed to recently is looping—pulling from a pattern her brain was trained to follow.” He stated, looking at Eleanor, “One you were never meant to carry into adulthood.”

John’s eyes darkened. “That…kind of disruption could cause major cognitive distress.”

Holmes nodded. “Sleep disruption. Identity fragmentation. Auditory bleed. Emotional instability. Even suicidal ideation—”

Eleanor’s voice, when it came, was fragile and thin. “H-he wouldn’t…he w-wasn’t—”

“Intending harm?” Sherlock offered. “Perhaps not. Most parents don’t attempt to break their child. Sentiment gets in the way, but something was done, and to that something your mind is trying to reject it. Violently, hence the recursive collapse you’ve been experiencing. Brilliant, really…”

John looked at him, “Sherlock—”

“Very like Henry Knight. Excellent comparison, John.”

His companion cleared his throat, “Sherlock—timing.”

“…Quite.”

Eleanor didn’t speak. Her fingers twitched once on her lap, then again, her hands folding in tightly over one another as though to keep herself physically contained. Her breath was shallow—barely perceptible. She could feel her gaze had gone unfocused, fixed somewhere in the middle distance whilst blurring all the rest. Without a mirror she had no confirmation, but she could feel her complexion had drained to near translucent.

John looked at Sherlock, still in a state of disbelief, before his gaze went on to Eleanor. He started to stand when he noticed her pallor, “Eleanor, are you alright?”

She blinked rapidly and stood too quickly. Her plate tilted off her lap and clattered to the floor as she went, scattering the food to the table, rug, and floor below— “I-I n-n-need to go,” she stated, “I sh-shouldn’t have c-c-come. I—I n-need to—”

“Eleanor, wait—” John took a step toward her but she had already turned toward the door, unsteady on her feet. Her knees buckled despite her attempts to reach the back of the chair for balance. Her weight shifted, she stumbled, and in a matter of seconds she was catching herself much too hard on the arm of the couch.

John saw it first. “Jesus—Sherlock—she’s bleeding.”

Eleanor swayed, trying to pull the coat back around her. They…They’d see, that spreading patch of dark crimson, the one that’d begun soaking through the fabric of her skirt. Her breath came faster, more panicked. “I—it’s f-fine—”

“No, it’s not,” John said sharply, already crossing the room. “Bloody hell, sit down, now.”

She hesitated for half a second—just long enough to lose her balance completely. John, thankfully, caught her before she hit the floor, lowering her back to the rug with practiced hands. By the time Sherlock moved John had already pulled up her skirt, revealing the soaked towel she’d wrapped haphazardly around her thigh. It’d bled through, staining the cloth a deep burgundy as well as the tights still shredded around it. “Christ,” Watson hissed. “I need the med kit. Now. Kitchen drawer—top right.”

The detective turned without hesitation and strode off, vanishing around the corner.

John pressed both hands into the towel, trying to staunch the bleeding. His voice changed—lower, sharper, honed by years of battlefield reflex. “Eleanor, I need you to keep your eyes on me. Just keep looking at me, alright?”

Despite her best efforts Eleanor’s head was tipping back, her breaths short and uneven, lashes fluttering. “Damn it—” She blinked once, a slow drag of her eyelids. “Eleanor, I need you to stay with me—come on—”

Sherlock returned just as John ripped open the med kit, shifting both herself and he to expose more of her wounded leg. The cut was deep—too deep to have gone unnoticed this long. Both men realized it must’ve done it before dinner, the dinner of which they’d sat through with this wound leaking beneath her coat.

“I need scissors,” John barked, “Saline if you’ve got it. Antiseptic. Keep pressure here—just here.” He guided Sherlock’s hands in, already reaching for the gauze and packing. “She cut along the muscle,” The doctor muttered, mostly to himself. “Shallow enough to miss the femoral artery but that’s fucking dumb luck. If she’d gone an inch to the left…”

Sherlock said nothing.
He knelt beside John, pressing his palm down exactly where indicated, watching the color drain from Eleanor’s face with that same cold observational precision he reserved for…well, everything.

“Pulse is weak,” Watson muttered, checking her neck, now, her wrist. “We need to elevate her legs. Get a pillow under them.”

Sherlock grabbed the nearest one from the couch, propping it beneath her.

“She’s gone into shock. Blood loss. Trauma. Possibly both.” John’s hands didn’t stop moving, wrapping, pressing, knotting with steady precision.

“Hospital?” Holmes asked.

John didn’t answer immediately. He looked down at her pale face, the light sheen of sweat on her brow, the smear of blood on her inner thigh. “If I can stop the bleeding, maybe not.”

Chapter Text

The early morning light had begun to press against the frost-glazed windows of 221B Baker Street, a pale, half-hearted grey that did little to warm the flat, the street. The fire in the grate had dimmed to a dull orange flicker, barely casting more than a suggestion of warmth. The wood had burned low during the night, the last of the evening embers pulsing quiet flashes of amber and ash in the grate. The old bones of Baker Street creaked against the shifting weather, though that was the only notable sound that remained in the flat.

Sherlock Holmes sat still as a statue in the armchair opposite the sofa, fingers steepled, unmoving save for the occasional cast of his eyes toward the woman lying across from him, on said couch. Eleanor Greyson, pale and unconscious, hadn’t stirred in nearly three hours. Her breathing had steadied, and John had said that was a good sign, but it’d been after that that the Doctor himself went to sleep. He was dozing lightly in his own armchair, an open medical journal facedown in his lap, glasses crooked at the bridge of his nose. His young, daughter Rosie slept against his chest in her sling, rising and falling with the rhythm of his breathing.

Unlike the remainder of the flat, Sherlock himself hadn’t slept.

It was all quite peaceful, in the way hospitals sometimes were after midnight: not calm, but exhausted. A stillness that came not from serenity, but aftermath.

On the table beside him, Holmes’ phone buzzed—he picked it up without looking.

MYCROFT:

Your “favor” was not subtle, little brother.
I’ll send what I can.
You’re digging into black tape.
-M

Sherlock tapped back:

SHERLOCK:

Tell the Americans I said hello.
-SH

He dropped the phone back to the table and leaned forward, eyes on the woman, on Eleanor.

Long fingers, elegant—musician’s hands, obvious. The nails bitten, raw—anxiety, then, though the joint of her right-hand thumb still bore the slight callus where a clarinetist would brace the weight of the instrument. The kind of detail he wouldn’t usually notice, granted, but there were smaller ones—one on her index, matching on the left-hand as well. Both located by the joints of her knuckles. A symptom of hitting keys repeatedly, then, the tremolo keys—if he remembered correctly.

Her clothing, too, said more than she likely intended. The blouse—cream-colored, delicately ruffled at the collar and cuffs—was high-necked, vaguely gothic in style. Worn intentionally, not as a costume, but with preference. An aversion to low cuts? Or perhaps simply a desire to recede. The lace at the neck was just slightly frayed, a thread pulling beneath the jawline, suggesting frequent wear.

Her clothing, too, said more than she likely intended. The blouse—cream-colored, delicately ruffled at the collar and cuffs—was high-necked, vaguely gothic in style. Worn intentionally, not as a costume, but with preference. An aversion to low cuts? Or perhaps simply a desire to recede. The lace at the neck was just slightly frayed, a thread pulling beneath the jawline, suggesting frequent wear. The long brown skirt pooled slightly at the hem, fine pleats neatly ironed. A modest silhouette—fashionable, but archaised. The aesthetic of someone who was perceived as professional, who was deliberately composed. Every part of her seemed buttoned, pleated, restrained.

Sherlock’s eyes traced the outline of her profile—glasses perched just slightly lower than the bridge, a quirk of habit rather than disrepair. She pushed them up occasionally with her middle finger, not the index. Tells of preference, unconscious comfort.

He said nothing aloud, but his gaze lingered. Eleanor hadn’t stirred yet, but her breathing was shifting—shallower now, the twitch of a muscle in her cheek indicating proximity to wakefulness. Sherlock turned his gaze from her, reaching now for his laptop, balancing it on his knees. The screen glowed to life with a list of search terms:

LEANNE GREYSON
DARPA CONTRACTOR
MEMORY TETHERING
ROLAND THEROUX
COGNITIVE CONDITIONING
LONDON SYMPHONY INCIDENT

Sherlock scrolled through blacked-out documents, dead URLs, archived conference schedules. He paused at one scan of an old grant submission. The document was heavily redacted—but one phrase leapt out from a faded note scribbled in the margin:

            Subject E.G. showing increased retention under auditory isolation.

John stirred just then in the chair opposite—a low, half-snort escaping as he blinked himself awake. He shifted stiffly in the armchair, rolling his shoulders with a wince as he rubbed his eyes. Rosie let out a tiny, gurgling sigh against his chest, still deep in her own realm of sleep. Her father watched her with a smile, carefully unfastening the sling so she could better lay against his chest now that he was awake.

He moved with the fluid precision of someone used to this kind of balance—one arm cradling Rosie while the other gathered the soft blanket they’d kept tucked at the side of his chair. He laid her gently on the small cot by the fireplace, tucking the blanket around her with quiet efficiency. Thankfully, she barely stirred.

“She still out?” He murmured.

Sherlock didn’t look up. “Yes. Stable, for now.”

Once Rosie was settled, John pushed to his feet with a low groan, making his way toward the couch as he ran a hand through his tousled hair. He looked to Eleanor, lying still beneath the blanket, “We’ll need to get fluids in her. Maybe food, if she’ll take it.” John crouched beside the sofa, two fingers finding the pulse point at Eleanor’s neck. He counted silently, “You rang Mrs. Hudson yet?”

“No, why would I?”

John lay his head back, staring at the ceiling with a long, exasperated sigh, “Yeah. Right…well, I will then.”

The detective gave no indication of hearing him, still focused on his computer files.

A few muttered curses left the doctor as he straightened, absently rubbing at the ache in his lower back as he did so. He’d been prepared to give a call downstairs, moving to the door to do so, when a soft buzz came from Sherlock’s phone. It lit facedown on the side table, then again, and a third time, and a fourth. The Doctor gave a sidelong glance at his friend, “I take it you did reach out to Mycroft, then.”

The flicker at the corner of Sherlock’s mouth was answer enough.

John folded his arms, “So you do think this is serious, what’s happening with her?”

“Potentially.” Sherlock said mildly, adding, “And…Mycroft owed me a favor.”

A pause.

“How many favors does he owe you, exactly?”

“A childhood’s worth.”

The doctor grunted softly at that, shaking his head. Sherlock didn’t reply, didn’t look up—just let his fingers twitch over the keyboard, his eyes scanning the half-loaded document. John narrowed his eyes as he looked at him, “Did you sleep, Sherlock?”

The detective’s eyes didn’t leave the screen. “Observation requires at least one of us to keep consciousness, John.”

He studied his comrade—quiet, calculating, jaw clenched in some visible bout of mental dispensation. It pulled a knowing look to John’s face, “Right. Right, of course.” He began, “So…Enjoying this case, hm?”

Sherlock spared him a look, then, eyebrows drawn. “As I do with any case?”

“Well, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you like this.” John corrected. His comrade didn’t rise to the bait though his fingers tapped once, twice, at the trackpad of his computer. “Not since… what? Culverton Smith? Eurus?”

There was no answer, but Sherlock’s jaw tightened—his narrowed gaze sharpening on the screen. John waited a beat, then softened, “You’ve barely touched your tea.”

“Yes, excellent deduction.”

The doctor crossed his arms, studying his friend with increasing scrutiny, “This woman…She’s in trouble. Scared. Desperate.”

“And an excellent memory as well. Really, John, you’re in sparkling form today.”

“You know, she reminds me a bit of Irene,” He continued, tone more thoughtful than accusing. “Not in the obvious ways, but…” John trailed off, “She needed help too. Different kind, maybe.”

Sherlock gave a long, exasperated sigh.

“Or…your sister. She did as well—” He went on, “Actually, you had a similar memory slip. With Eurus, so you could be relating to her cause but…she needed help, didn’t she? Like this?”

“I’m working a case. That’s all.”

“Of course you are.”

That earned him a glare from the Detective—sharp, brief, irritated. “She’s a case, John.”

“Which is what you said about Irene.”

“The Woman was a criminal.”

John held up his hands. “Yeah, well, I didn’t say she wasn’t. Just pointing out your type.”

“…I don’t have a type.”

“Right.” John made a small sound in his throat—somewhere between amusement and skepticism—as he walked past Sherlock toward the kitchen. 

Behind him, the detective’s gaze returned to the sofa where Eleanor lay, pale and still, the lines of her face slackened in sleep, peace.
A case, he reminded himself. 

His phone buzzed again, this time with a different tone. A priority ping.

MYCROFT:
Files sent via encrypted drop.
Expect redactions.
I trust that this goes no further than the three of you.
-M

Attached was a secure drive access key. Sherlock already had the laptop connected—it took little time for him to open the remainder of the file. Dozens of documents filled the screen once he did, though—scans of declassified projects, DARPA logs, research projects, experiments, grant proposals. Names that had appeared in his mental periphery before now reappeared with new context; Leanne Greyson—a name that’d been filed under “irrelevant” years ago during the Moriarty web sweep. Now it rose from ashes with alarming clarity: “Trial Protocol – Auditory Mnemonic Reinforcement (Subject E.G.)”

He opened it:

“Controlled exposure sessions continued for Subject E.G., female, age 9. Noted heightened retention when paired with atonal intervals and low-frequency reverberation. Initial behavioral agitation noted. Recommending pause in testing schedule until side effects are logged and mitigated.”

Sherlock leaned back slightly, reading the paragraph again as he steepled his fingers. Intriguing.

He didn’t notice John return until the doctor set a glass of water and a banana on the coffee table. The doctor stood watching him for a moment before he cleared his throat, eyebrows raised, “I take it by your look you found something?”

“A few buried horrors…” The detective murmured.

John folded his arms. “Meaning?”

“Her father didn’t just study memory, he was engineering possible outcomes to stimulus. Looping patterns, sound-based reinforcement—directed sensory reprogramming.” He frowned, “Applied to a child whose brain hadn’t yet developed, all designed to manipulate how memory was formed, accessed, and eventually overwritten. And, as I thought, he used his child for the baseline trials.”

He turned the laptop slightly toward John without a word. The screen still displayed the declassified scan—grayscale text with uneven redactions and faded annotations scribbled in the margin. John stepped closer, squinting down at the dense, bureaucratic font. "I’m a medical doctor, Sherlock." he muttered.

“You understand basic psychology and neurobiology,” He replied, fingers now poised on the trackpad. “Or at least enough of it to know what early, repeated exposure to sound-conditioning does to a child's synaptic formation.”

His comrade looked to him then the document, frowning, “‘Heightened retention under atonal intervals…’ Like…music, tones?”

“Indeed.”

“’Behavioral agitation,’” John kept reading aloud, “Hmm…’Subject exhibited transient self-injurious behavior—nail biting to bleeding, rhythmic head striking—when left in continued auditory loop beyond 20-minute exposure window. Regression to pre-verbal vocalization noted under extended frequency cycling…’” He paused, “God, she was nine.”

Sherlock nodded, “Conditioned behavioral reset, A failsafe. If the memory couldn’t be accessed or executed as intended, the subject defaulted to an earlier cognitive state.”

“So her stammer?”

“Retained as part of the response loop.” He stated simply.

The two sat in silence for a moment before John returned the detective his computer, “So…Do you think she remembers any of it?”

“My hypothesis is that the hallucinations are, for lack of a better term, programmed recall—her mind trying to overwrite a stimulus sequence that either never ended properly, or was brought back to her consciousness through similar stimuli.”

It was only then that they heard Eleanor stir—an uneasy breath, a soft exhale like the start of a nightmare just coming loose from sleep.

Sherlock closed the laptop with a soft click and stood. “Speaking of...”

“Eleanor?” John was already moving—years of battlefield instinct funneling into bedside gentleness. He crouched with his forefinger and middle pressed on her wrist, “Eleanor, can you hear me?”

She let out a soft, unsure sound—half a word, half a breath. Her eyelids fluttered, sluggish, before parting just enough to reveal glassy, unfocused eyes.

“It’s alright,” The doctor said gently, “You’re safe. At Baker Street, remember? You’re at Baker Street.”

“W-w-what…happened?” Her eye twitched as she croaked out the words.

“You lost a lot of blood,” John offered her a small, steady smile. “We patched you up. You blacked out for a while, but you’re safe now. Just take it easy.”

Eleanor blinked slowly, her gaze drifting—first toward the flickering hearth, then toward the half-drawn curtains where daylight crept through in thin, reluctant bands. The colors in the room seemed too sharp, as if the world had come back wrong. Her throat worked once. Then again. Still, no sound.

John adjusted the blanket up over her shoulders and shifted the pillow beneath her head with practiced gentleness. “You’re going to be alright, just need some time, that’s all.”

Her mouth parted again, but only a faint exhale came. When it was apparent the words were stuck, her eyes slid sideways—toward Sherlock. He stood nearby, unmoving. Arms folded, expression unreadable, but his eyes fixed on her with the sharp, surgical stillness of a scalpel hovering above skin.

“Eleanor,” John said softly, trying again. “Do you know what day it is?”

She gave the faintest shake of her head.

“That’s okay. No pressure.”

He reached for the glass of water left on the table, held it near. “Let’s try this, yeah?”

She sipped without resistance—small, faltering movements. Her fingers curled slightly around the glass, then let go. She sank back into the pillows with a quiet, involuntary sound of effort. Her eyes fluttered closed, then open again.

Sherlock stepped forward a half pace. His voice, when it came, was tempered, “You injured yourself deliberately.”

She didn’t reply.

“And you've done it before,” John looked up at him, a warning there, but Sherlock didn’t stop— “Not always so severely, but enough—am I correct?”

Eleanor didn’t deny it. She didn’t nod either, but the twitch in her hand—so small most wouldn’t notice—was answer enough. Small. Easy to miss. Sherlock didn’t.

“Is that why you didn’t tell us?” John asked gently. “You thought we’d stop you?”

“I-I-I didn’t w-want t-to die.” Her eyes didn’t move, but she gave a sort of scoffing sound. “M-Mr. H-H-Holmes u-understands why, t-though, s-so I see n-no reason to s-say it aloud.”

The detective frowned, “Temporary relief. That’s why you time it—just deep enough to hurt, not badly enough to hinder function.”

She gave the smallest of nods—acknowledgement without shame.

The detective stepped forward—not hovering, not imposing, but with quiet purpose. His voice lost none of its clarity, but the sharpness in it softened by degrees. “You’re not imagining what’s happening to you,” he began, “Your condition—your perception—I’ve been reading through some of your Father’s research. Preliminary trial notes, conditioning logs, trial data. You were a subject—directly or indirectly.”

Her head shifted slightly, a frown forming across her brow. “I—I d-don’t…” Her throat worked. “I don’t r-remember…”

“You’re not meant to.” His response came quickly.

John glanced up at the detective with a nod before he placed a steadying hand on Eleanor’s arm, “We’ll sort through it, alright?” Then he added, more clinically, “But you have to let us help. Properly?”

The quiet stretched between them, not heavy with silence like before, but frayed, uneven—like a string pulling against itself, moments from snapping. Eleanor’s gaze dropped to her hands, which she now held close to her chest as they trembled. John reached over, a light squeeze on her arm grounding her again, “Let me clarify something,” he said gently. “You don’t have to say yes. Not now. Not to anything. Just…as a medical professional I can help. With this, anyway.”

“I—” She swallowed hard. “I-I-I am i-imposing.”

“No,” John said quickly, shaking his head. “No, you’re not.”

Eleanor gaze returned to the stitching of the blanket, counting the seams as she considered, “I-I didn’t c-c-come here to s-stay,” she retorted, “J-just for c-clarification.”

Sherlock spoke then—not unkind, but without ornament. “Obviously.” He stated, “Given your earlier statement of our intervention being your last hope, I’m inclined to believe this was to be the last stop on a more…permanent route.” His eyes met hers cooly, “But I will clarify that if you were truly an inconvenience on our routine or hospitality, Miss Greyson, I would’ve made that abundantly clear.”

That earned a flicker of a glance from her, though she didn’t quite meet his eyes.

“You think I’m cold,” Sherlock added, his tone bordering on observational, “Unfeeling. I’m afraid most do, when I speak plainly.”

Eleanor gave a soft, breathy scoff—not rude, just weary. “I-I d-don’t.” She didn’t look at him, but her words were firm in their own quiet way. “J-j-just because y-you don’t dress care up w-with action a-and flowery w-w-words d-doesn’t mean y-you’re unfeeling.”

John arched a brow at that. A corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Well. She’s not wrong.”

Sherlock didn’t reply, but something unreadable passed across his face—part recognition, part something…difficult.

The doctor leaned back, settling onto the arm of the chair beside the couch. “Alright,” he said, “Doctor’s orders—you don’t have to decide anything this morning. Eat something, rest. Sherlock and I will keep looking into your father’s files and when you feel ready—only then—we’ll talk about what comes next. Fair?”

Eleanor hesitated, then gave the smallest nod. “T-t-thank you.”

-

The sky outside had shifted from dreary grey to a moody silver, casting muted light through the windows of 221B and the flats around. Rain tapped intermittently on the panes—neither storm nor drizzle, just London in its most indecisive state.

Eleanor stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, one hand braced against the wall, the other tucked around the blanket she’d kept draped over her shoulders. Her posture was straighter now, but it wasn’t without effort. As before she looked pale, lips drawn tight and turned down in that quiet exhaustion only partially soothed by sleep.

Sherlock was at the table, typing, scrolling intermittently. He didn’t speak at first, or at all really, but his eyes found themselves wandering once they registered the woman’s presence, her awoken, presence.

Then again.

Then again.

After a few minutes of this quiet, odd behavior, Eleanor shifted under the weight of it, brows knitting as she turned to him. “W-what is i-i-it, Mr. H-Holmes?”

“You should be lying down,” he replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. The perturbed crease between his brows never eased.

“I d-did,” she replied, dry. “S-s-several hours, I think.”

He finished typing the line he was on before he closed the file, looking at her fully, “You lost nearly half a liter of blood.”

Eleanor blinked at him. “O-oh?”

“You were unconscious for over three hours,” Sherlock added, fingers returning to the trackpad. “Asleep for approximately two after. Systolic pressure likely dropped below seventy for a time. Pale,” He looked back at her quickly, paused, then returned to his computer, “And still so. Hypotensive, unresponsive—”

“W-wait…d-did…did y-y-you measure my b-b-blood l-loss?” She asked, not without incredulity.

“I estimated it. Blanket absorption rate. Floor staining pattern.” He looked to her again, sparingly, before going back to his computer, “John mentioned it verbally, though that merely confirmed what was already evident.”

Her lips parted faintly—like she might respond—but he cut her off. “You’re standing too long.”

Eleanor stared back at him, scowling, “And y-y-you’re very p-persistent, Mr. H-Holmes.”

“Sherlock, please.” Without preamble the detective stood and walked to the small sideboard table, grabbing up a glass of water that’d been sitting there since the morning. He held it out for her without ceremony, or mention, just holding it.

She took it hesitantly, fingers brushing his as she tucked the glass to her chest.

He spoke again once she took a sip, “Do lie down, now.” Sherlock stated, “I dislike when it becomes necessary to repeat myself.”

Eleanor gave a tight-lipped exhale through her nose—not quite a sigh, not quite a laugh—and turned without another word. She returned to the couch with reluctant steps, movements still stiff, deliberate. Lowering herself slowly, she pulled the blanket around her again, arms still curled loosely around the water glass.

For a moment, she stayed that way—quiet, watching the firelight flicker across the far wall. Sherlock, however, was already returned to his seat, posture drawn forward, eyes flicking rapidly across the screen again as he navigated through files. One hand worked the trackpad while the other hovered over a series of scrawled notes in his usual, unreadable shorthand. His concentration had reset completely. She watched him for a beat longer. “Y-you’re read-r-r-reading through t-them now?” She asked. “The f-f-files.”

He didn’t deny it.

Eleanor’s voice was quiet—careful—“D-d-do you think I’m mad, Mr.—?” She paused, corrected, “S-Sherlock?”

The detective’s expression remained stoic as he looked atop his screen at her, folding his hands together beneath his chin, “I dislike the subject. Madness is subjective, changing.”

She clutched the glass of water with both hands, more for something to hold than to drink. “You’re…n-not d-d-dismissing it.”

Sherlock tilted his head, a small movement, avian in its calculation. “I don’t dismiss data,” he replied.

Eleanor blinked at him, trying to read him—and failing. She hated that. She was usually so good at observing people, at catching their edges, but Sherlock, he was... a locked room of static.

“I’m not pitying you,” he added. “I don’t have the temperament, but I do recognize trauma, and the impact psychological damage can have on behavior and cognition, decision-making, perception.”

“That’s a l-lot of s-syllables to say y-you agree w-with my original p-point,” she murmured.

Sherlock’s mouth twitched, “Perhaps, But it hardly matters what I think. My opinion isn’t what dictates the truth of your situation.” He leaned back slightly. “Still, if you're worried…I’ve solved more complex puzzles with fewer pieces.” He paused, “Though I will say that there is a benefit to having the puzzle talk back.”

That pulled a faint sound from her—a breath that wanted to be laughter but landed somewhere in the ribs instead. Bitterness laced it, but it was genuine, and she turned her face slightly away to mask it. Her shoulders shifted, though—just enough to suggest that something had loosened inside her, just for a moment.

After that, they lapsed into silence.

Sherlock returned to his laptop without comment, the gentle tapping of keys resuming as he fell back into the cadence of work. Eleanor remained where she was, blanket gathered around her shoulders, the glass of water growing warmer in her hands. Her eyes drifted from the rim of the glass to the table, a few times, then to the small pyramid of books nearby.

She occupied herself with observing, given the company and lack of otherwise entertaining agenda.

The violin case near the fireplace caught her eye—still open, its velvet lining catching firelight in a way that made it look nearly black. A sheet of music had slipped halfway out from its folder and stirred faintly in the low breeze from the cracked window. The scent of lingering tea—black, maybe some breakfast brew—still hung faintly in the air.

Her gaze moved to the stack of books—criminal profiling, toxicology, something in Latin she didn’t quite catch. Notes were wedged between pages like bookmarks, some with single scrawled words: "bias," "falsehood," "why not fear?" She spotted a broken metronome on Sherlock’s desk—its front hand was frozen. Odd. So he was a musician, obviously.

As her eyes settled to the detective her keys slowed. Sherlock glanced up once, briefly, eyes going to her face before the door downstairs clicked open. John’s voice called up from the stairwell, “Only me!”

A beat later, John appeared at the top of the steps with Rosie nestled in her sling, half-dozing, half-murmuring against his chest. He carried a modest paper bag in one hand and a folded bundle of clothes in the other. “You’re up,” John said, eyebrows lifting as he caught sight of Eleanor upright and seated. “Good. That’s promising.”

She gave a small nod in return.

Without pausing, John handed the bag off to Sherlock, who took it without comment, and crossed to the sofa. He laid the stack of clothes gently on the armchair beside her. “These were…these were my wife, Mary’s,” John hesitated, voice softening. “Comfortable. Warm. She wouldn’t have minded.”

Eleanor’s fingers brushed the edge of the fabric rather reverently, “Th-thank you.”

John’s answering smile was quiet but genuine. “Bathroom’s yours. Clean towels on the rack.”

-

The door to the bathroom creaked open on slow, protesting hinges, releasing a rush of warm steam into the corridor. Eleanor stepped out on bare feet, bracing herself on the doorframe as she limped out. She wore an oversized, heather-grey jumper that fell just past her hips; the sleeves were too long, partially swallowing her hands but it was clean, soft, and smelled faintly of lavender detergent. The outfit was accompanied by a pair of soft, navy trousers—neither of which belonged to her, but they were well-worn, warm. Her hair was damp, darkened by water and combed back from her face, curling slightly at the ends where it began to dry. Her skin looked clearer, the pallor softened by both warmth and soap.

Padding down the hallway, she found the duo where she’d left them: John in the kitchen making tea, Sherlock back at the table, hunched slightly over his laptop. He hadn’t looked up when she entered but the slight stilling of his fingers suggested he’d acknowledged her presence.

“Better?” John asked without turning, already reaching for the milk.

Eleanor crossed the room quietly and lowered herself onto the couch, the jumper bunching slightly around her elbows as she tugged the blanket over her legs again. “M-much,” she said, voice low but steadier than earlier. “T-T-thank you.”

“Good.” He brought her over one of the teacups, leaving it to the coffee table in from of her. “Drink something hot. Doctor’s orders.”

Sherlock’s fingers resumed their quiet dance over the keyboard, the rhythm quicker now—sharp, determined, almost agitated. He was muttering to himself between keystrokes as she and John spoke together—short, clipped words punctuated by an occasional sigh, “Color association…” Typing again, scrolling, “Patterned reintroduction…No, no sequence integrity.”

Eleanor watched him. Quietly, of course, but she watched him with a faint tilt of her head, the kind of half-skeptical curiosity that hadn’t yet decided whether to be wary or impressed.

Sherlock tapped a final key and pulled the laptop toward him, angling the screen to himself then they, firing off; “It’s all here,” he said aloud, “Greyson’s notes weren’t just recordings—they were loops. Sequences of auditory recall meant to stimulate mnemonic anchoring through fragmented associative exposure.”

John, who’d crossed from the kitchen, leaned against the back of the sofa. He handed Sherlock his own tea with one hand as he moved to look over the screen, “Any chance you could translate that for the rest of us?”

Sherlock barely spared him a glance, gesturing instead to his computer, “Her father didn’t just expose her to sounds—it was conditioning, over and over. All his experiments indicate embedded instructions that can be activated or triggered by auditory stimuli—thus, the issue is solidifying what.” He turned away for a moment, pacing, “We could start with white noise, harmonic dissonance, specific melodic typings if we manage to isolate a key or other sequence…atonality was noted, so…” He rambled on, picking back up with a furious shake of his head, “These sequences were used not just as stimulus, but as scaffolding—structures upon which memory, suggestion, and even behavioral response could be constructed or modified, controlled.”

John’s brows lifted. “So these episodes…”

“Precisely, John.”

“I-I-I d-don’t follow.” Eleanor admitted softly.

“Neither do I, frankly.” John added, glancing at her., “Slow down, Sherlock—"

“Oh, come on,” Sherlock exhaled, sharp and impatient, but he paused. His fingers steepled in front of his mouth for a beat before he lowered his hands and spoke again—clearer this time, more focused. “Traditional hallucinations—schizophrenic, schizoaffective, even trauma-induced—arise internally. Disordered thought patterns, stress chemical imbalance, fractured ego states. They’re spontaneous or cyclic.”

Both nodded.

He turned to Eleanor now, not unkindly, just sharply observant. “Each exposure she was subjected to was paired with environmental or emotional cues—scent, temperature, color, even time of day. Over time, those associations solidify. She’s not fabricating what she’s experiencing. Her mind has been conditioned to replay specific sequences when a cue is introduced—aural cues, mostly, but I’d wager visual or tonal ones could work too. The right combination—a phrase spoken in a certain rhythm, a musical interval struck just wrong—and the system activates.”

Eleanor sat forward slightly, the blanket shifting over her knees; her eyes were bright despite the lines of fatigue still clinging to her face. There was no wide expression, no dramatics—just a simple, stunned kind of awe. “Y-you…y-y-you figured all that out…in a few h-hours?”

Sherlock hesitated, mid-motion. It wasn’t a pause of calculation—it was brief, reactive. A flicker of something human passing behind his eyes before he could school it back into place.

Her voice came again, “H-hells…T-that’s…that’s brilliant.”

He blinked—and for the first time in any recent memory, John watched as Sherlock Holmes—his flatmate, the arrogant hurricane of logic and deduction—actually faltered. “I—I—well,” he stammered, “It’s...obvious.”

John’s head turned slowly, incredulously, as if he’d just witnessed a glacier cracking in real time. His eyebrows lifted so high they nearly reached his slicked back hairline, “Did…did you just—?”

Sherlock cleared his throat with unnecessary force, already straightening in his chair. “—Obvious,” he added brusquely, as though he hadn’t just tripped over his own tongue. “The pieces were all there. Anyone with access to the original files and a functioning understanding of audio-psychological response conditioning could have pieced it together. It was all repetition and structure. Trial logs were misfiled, yes, but coded in the metadata. Redundant, really.”

“A f-f-few hours t-though,” Eleanor stammered, “I…I b-believed myself l-losing m-my mind, and…i-in just a-a few h-hours…”

Sherlock waved a hand dismissively, already rising from his chair, “Any moderately gifted mind could do the same given the right data.”

John gave a quiet scoff behind her. 

But Sherlock was already crossing the room, the click of his shoes light on the hardwood as he moved to the violin resting near the bookshelf. He picked it up with practiced ease, tucking it beneath his chin. His fingers found the tuning pegs almost absently, twisting them with small adjustments. The faint tones that followed were quiet, half-formed—test pitches in a minor register. “I’ll need to isolate the triggers.” He murmured. “The sequencing might respond to a nullified auditory pattern. A benefit, given that would then allow us to undo priming and, presumably, cure Ms. Greyson of her hallucinations.”

-

The next few days passed not in hours, but in pulses—measured in the hum of frequencies, the steam of half-finished mugs of tea, the muted creak of floorboards and shifting blankets. It was a rhythm neither static nor entirely stable, experiments and recovery, rest punctuated by ritual and the quiet accumulation of trust. Baker Street changed. Not drastically—there were still the usual messes, the teetering stack of papers, the scent of tobacco clinging to the air—but subtly, in its function. The flat became something between a sanctuary and a laboratory, with Eleanor finding herself somewhere in between both patient and subject.

The sofa was hers, unofficially. When she wasn’t lying down, she sat curled under a blanket, notebook in hand, legs tucked beneath her. Sherlock, as ever, filled the space with motion and sound.

He started with tone experiments—clear, clinical, deliberate. He swept through sine waves and frequency filters, slow modulations that climbed and dropped through octaves like falling panes of glass. At first, Eleanor winced. Then she listened. Then she documented. Sometimes she flinched, sometimes she scribbled in the notebook a thought, a word, memory, sometimes she’d ask him to stop without fully knowing why.

John, the axis around which all this orbited, watched it unfold with quiet resolve. He kept notes in tidy penmanship, each line timestamped and annotated with clinical calm. He checked Eleanor’s vitals, asked questions when appropriate, made tea she sometimes forgot to drink. He didn’t push. He didn’t prod. 

The next round of experiments were with musical application, specifically intervals—minor sevenths, augmented triads, parallel fifths, any and every combination and overlay. Sherlock played the majority of them on violin, sometimes with sharp intention, sometimes idly while staring into the fireplace—each time waiting to see what might resonate with Eleanor. One evening, she did flinch at a diminished seventh arpeggio he played just above a pianissimo dynamic, “T-t-that one,” she whispered. “It f-f-feels…wrong.”

Sherlock paused, bow hovering mid-air. “Wrong how?”

“Not…p-p-physically.” She looked at him, “Don’t k-know. J-just u-uneasy.”

Both said nothing more but she wrote it in her notebook, circled it three times.

They tried environmental triggers next—ambient sounds. Rain recorded against glass, clock ticks, echoes in tiled rooms, crowds, trains. Eleanor responded to some more strongly than others; for example, the sound of an old tape reel spinning made her feel faint. At the static of a vinyl record needle scratching against silence, she clutched the arm of the sofa so hard her knuckles turned white. This occasion brought with it a memory, however; “W-we used to h-have a player,” she said hoarsely. “My father…he’d p-p-play l-l-lessons on it. With m-metronomes and t-tape.”

“Repetition,” Sherlock muttered, “Noted.”

Each breakthrough was small, but not without measure; for example, Eleanor stopped apologizing every time she had a reaction.

-

The knock came at precisely 7:03 p.m.—not a second before, not a second late.

Sherlock didn’t look up from the desk. He didn’t need to. “It’s unlocked,” he called, the words clipped, rehearsed.

The door opened with familiar ease, as though the hinges themselves had resigned to inevitability. Mycroft Holmes stepped inside in full regalia: tailored coat perfectly pressed, umbrella folded beneath one arm like an old ritual, and a sleek leather satchel in the other. “Evening,” he began, eyes scanning the room with his usual blend of distaste and bored familiarity. “Still thriving in curated entropy, I see.”

“Spare me the commentary,” Sherlock muttered without turning. “Do you have the rest of it?”

Mycroft raised the satchel like a stage prop, no flourish required. “All of it,” he said. “As requested, brother mine. You’re lucky I didn’t incinerate the lot after the first read-through.”

Sherlock rose, silent but swift, taking the satchel and setting it beside the spread of files already consuming half his desk. A practiced hand unzipped the top, and within—neat rows of folders, pages stamped with faded DARPA emblems and redacted into almost meaningless abstraction; well…not entirely meaningless. He flipped through them with a practiced eye, pausing on a particular folder—one page, handwritten and familiar.

“You’re certain this is her script?” Mycroft’s tone had shifted now—less rhetorical, more clinical.

Sherlock didn’t look up. “Compared it against school forms, a scholarship essay, one unsent application to the Royal College.” He tapped the corner of the page, “Capital G curls the same, slight hesitation on the E.”

“Fascinating,” Mycroft murmured, though it landed more like a veiled warning than admiration. “If the subject was exposed to reinforcement stimuli that young, there’s every chance she remembers more than she believes. Worse still—she may remember nothing, and respond anyway.”

“Yes, thank you for your input, brother dear.”

Mycroft folded his hands loosely in front of him. “Am I to understand, then, that you’ve considered the consequences of presenting her with stimulus that could further destabilize her?”

“She already is destabilized,” Sherlock snapped, finally looking up, his tone laced with barely veiled frustration. “The damage was done long before she ever stepped foot in this flat—long before she even had the vocabulary to name it.”

A pause followed. Not silence—just an odd sort of…charged, suspended stillness.

Mycroft tilted his head slightly, emphasizing the last words as though it left a terrible taste in his mouth. “So…You’re invested.”

Sherlock’s gaze cooled at once, “She’s a thread in a dead man’s map. That’s all.”

“Mm.” Mycroft said nothing for a beat, simply walked a slow arc around the flat, eyes flicking over the curated chaos: scrawled musical notation pinned next to floor plans, folders of stimulus patterns tangled in red thread.“Curious,” he murmured at last. He began in that offhanded way he always reserved for knives, specifically those which he preferred to slide between his sibling’s ribs, “How often the tangled puzzles catch your attention, and only when the subject is, so to say…damaged.”

Sherlock turned back to the files, refusing the bait.

Mycroft let the silence stretch before offering his final shot. “Do take care, little brother. You always did have a soft spot for…broken instruments.”

Any reply Sherlock might’ve offered was cut short by the soft creak of hinges and the faint patter of footsteps from down the hall. The bathroom door opened, and Eleanor stepped into the room—dressed in one of Mary’s oversized sweatshirts, trousers loose at the ankles, her damp hair tied back into a low, practical braid. The collar of the jumper slipped slightly to one side, exposing the line of her clavicle.

She froze at the sight of a guest, of Mycroft.

He turned at once to face her, that diplomatic mask sliding effortlessly into place. His eyes flicked over her, once. Not unkind, but certainly not unaware. There was a pause—just long enough to assess, but not long enough to feel polite.

“And you must be Miss Greyson,” Mycroft said smoothly, offering a nod that somehow managed to be both formal and indifferent. “We’ve not been formally introduced.”

Eleanor stepped into the room with a quiet, practiced composure—shoulders back, chin slightly lifted. “It’s D-Dr. Greyson, a-a-a-ctually.”

Mycroft, halfway through extending his hand in polite indifference, blinked. Just once. Ah,” he said smoothly, recovering. “My apologies.”

Sherlock, still standing by the files, turned his head slightly at the correction. His brows lifted a fraction at the same moment the corner of his mouth twitched—grinning. “Mycroft Holmes,” the elder brother offered, as though the name alone constituted a full introduction. “The older.”

Her brows pulled together slightly, not in offense but caution. She glanced between them, cataloguing the older man in the same fashion as he seemed to with her. When both seemed disinterested her eyes returned to Sherlock as she clutched her tea, “Am I…i-i-interrupting?”

The detective didn’t look up from the files, but his answer came without delay. “No.”

Mycroft’s eyes narrowed though he played his brother’s comment off with a near acidic smile, “That depends on your definition of ‘interruption.’”

Eleanor’s gaze moved from he to the folder still residing in Mycroft’s hand, adding it to the collection she could see spread out from a briefcase by Sherlock. Her brow drew down in concern, “N-new f-files?”

Sherlock gave the smallest incline of his head. “Supplemental data.”

The elder raised a single brow at his brother’s tone, but he handed Sherlock the folder—a gesture both formal and deliberate—“Delivered via MI5’s archive. You’ll find the majority of it indexed by sequence and response category. Most of the original metadata was scrubbed, but I had my analysts reconstruct what they could, though I’m sure you can parse it out.”

He flipped the file open with practiced precision, eyes darting across the pages, “The source?”

“Recovered from a private DARPA satellite archive. Off-grid. Hidden well enough I assumed even you would have missed it.” Mycroft adjusted one of his cuffs. “And we did, given this is just coming back to the light of day.”

Mycroft shifted his weight, scanning the room with casual disapproval. His eyes lingered on a loose string of pinned notecards above the fireplace, then on Eleanor again—purposefully.

Silence followed; it hung there, brittle and fine, like frost on glass as the two stared at each other, weighed each other. “Well,” The older tucked his umbrella back to his hand with an air of purpose, as if he were someone about to exit a boardroom rather than a sitting room. “Expect my analysts to reach out within the week. Whether you respond is your prerogative—though I suggest you do, brother mine.”

He didn’t wait for a reply. He never did, though Mycroft did nod to Eleanor again, this time with something almost resembling formality. “Doctor.” His footsteps carried him across the threshold, umbrella tucked precisely beneath his arm as the door to the flat closed with a rather punctuated click.

-

The clock on the mantel ticked just past two.
The fire had long since dwindled to embers—little more than a memory of warmth now, casting intermittent light in dull orange patches across the floorboards. Outside, the rain had quieted, though the pavement below glistened wet beneath the pale amber spill of the streetlamp.

Eleanor stirred from where she’d been half-dozing on the sofa, the blanket gathered around her like a cocoon. The scent caught her first—sharp, familiar, faintly metallic with a hint of spice, tobacco…smoke?

She blinked against the darkness and followed it, her eyes tracing the silhouette of the flat. Chairs, shelves, the latter—it all looked the same, save for the detective leaning over near an opened window.

Sherlock sat with one arm draped across the back of the chair, legs stretched out, a cigarette balanced between two long, pale fingers. The window in front of him was open just a sliver, enough to let the smoke drift outward and curl along the chilly air like ribbons. The wind didn’t reach far into the flat, thankfully, but it tugged gently at a curl of his hair, lifting it before letting it settle again. His posture was composed—almost too still, matching his far away gaze.

Behind him, Eleanor stirred beneath the blanket on the couch. She shifted carefully, limbs slow to respond after too many hours curled in the same position. The scent had drawn her from sleep first—familiar, sharp, slightly sweet with a dry bitterness beneath. Tobacco. She rose slowly, the floor cold beneath her bare feet as she stepped from the shadows of the sofa. For a moment she lingered, uncertain, arms folded loosely around herself.

Sherlock’s voice came just as she stepped into the reach of the streetlamp’s glow spilling through, “I didn’t wake you,” he said, low, certain. Not a question.

“N-n-no,” she murmured. “I j-just s-smelled it.”

His lips twitched—just at the corner. “Old habit of mine.”

She paused near the edge of his desk, arms wrapped loosely around herself, unsure whether to come closer or slip quietly back to the safety of blankets. The silence between them wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t entirely empty either.

Sherlock turned slightly then, not fully, but enough that his profile caught the windowlight—sharp nose, high cheekbones, lashes darker than seemed fair. The slope of his throat moved with a breath as he exhaled, smoke drifting through the narrow crack in the window. There was something unreal about him like this—sculptural.

“You ever smoked?” he asked, voice quiet, even—like the question was rhetorical, but he meant it anyway.

She blinked, caught a little off guard by the casualness of it. “T-tried once,” she murmured. “B-b-back in t-the States. F-f-failed.” A weak shrug, almost sheepish. “C-c-college.”

Sherlock studied her for a beat, then extended the cigarette between two of his fingers, holding it out—not quite insistently, but with the assumption she’d take it if she wanted.

Eleanor hesitated. Her gaze flicked from the cigarette to his face and back again. Then, with a breath she wasn’t sure she needed, she stepped forward and reached for it. Her fingers brushed his as she accepted the cigarette—brief, light, but his skin was cool.

She brought it to her lips—more awkward than she wanted to be, but she did it. The filter touched her mouth; she tried to mimic what she’d seen, what she thought she remembered. Inhaled—too sharp, too fast.

The burn hit the back of her throat like a slap, and she recoiled instantly with a choked gasp, coughing hard as she turned her face away from the window—and from him. One hand braced against the edge of the desk for balance while the other still held the cigarette between two unsteady fingers. “Bloody…h-hell—s-s-sorry—” She rasped, eyes watering now as she coughed into the side of her wrist, her voice thin and scorched.

She glanced at him, her face half-lit by the soft orange glow of the ember, and held out the cigarette in embarrassed return of the offering.

“No need,” Sherlock said, his tone entirely devoid of judgement. He made no move to take it back, “Try again—don’t inhale straight away. Let it settle, then breathe in.”

Her brows knit faintly, skeptical.

Still coughing faintly, Eleanor glanced down at the cigarette, then up at him. He hadn’t looked away.

She hesitated, then brought it to her lips once more, slower this time. Eleanor let the smoke sit, tasting it without drawing it down too fast. The burn was there, but muted now—less a slap, more a warning. The exhale that followed was uneven and thin, but she didn’t cough. Smoke curled from her lips as she extended the cigarette back to him.

Sherlock watched her with a sort of quiet interest, like one might watch a storm pass at a distance. No smile, but something almost close to it in his eyes as he took the cigarette back. He guided it back toward his own mouth with the ease of ritual though his long, pale fingers brushed hers as he took it. When the filter hit his lips he inhaled, slow, practiced as he held it a moment, careful to exhale through the window’s crack.

They sat like that for a moment—neither of them speaking, just the low crack of the cooling hearth, the distant whisper of rain, the faint orange glow of the cigarette as it passed between them. Eleanor tucked her feet under herself and leaned slightly against the side of the desk, her shoulders still hunched against the cold.

Sherlock glanced sideways after a while, “You can sit.”

She looked at him, then nodded faintly and lowered herself to the floor beside his chair—closer to the window, to him, though she didn’t say anything else and neither did he. After another stretch of time, he passed the cigarette to her again.

.

Rain laced the windows in narrow streaks whilst the fireplace crackled in its usual uneven rhythm. Rosie lay sprawled across the rug in the center of the room, her arms flung out in concentration as she colored a rather enthusiastic triceratops a brilliant, blotchy purple. The flat felt still in a way it rarely did—no violin, no typing, no sharp noises.

Eleanor sat curled in one corner of the couch, one of John’s thick knit blankets draped around her shoulders. She held a half-full mug of tea in both hands, though it had long since cooled. Her eyes drifted, restless and quiet—moving from the fireplace to the shelves, to the half-drawn curtains, to the closed laptop on the desk where Sherlock had last been seated. “H-h-he’s been g-gone a-a-awhile,” she said—not anxious, just noticing.

John glanced up from the armchair, where he was half-buried in receipts and the leftover contents of a drawer Molly had unloaded on him weeks back. He set down a tangled phone charger with a sigh. “Yeah. Said he had to meet Mycroft.” He made a face, half grimace, half shrug. “Didn’t elaborate, naturally.”

Eleanor nodded faintly, recalling the elder Holmes which had visited the flat just the few days earlier, “He d-doesn’t…t-t-talk about h-him m-much.”

He huffed a short breath through his nose. “You wouldn’t hear it, unless he’s annoyed with him. Which is most of the time.”

That pulled a ghost of a smile from her, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

A quiet settled between them again—comfortable, if slightly pensive. Rain pattered gently on the windows, a gentle stream that was relatively peaceful given the hour, the coziness of the room. Rosie, meanwhile, seemed to be murmuring some sort of gibberish to her triceratops.

John leaned forward after a few minutes, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands loosely in front of him. “You know,” he began, with the tone of a man trying to sound casual but failing completely, “It’s been fascinating, watching the way he is around you.”

Eleanor’s head turned slightly. One brow arched. “Sorry…W-who?”

The doctor huffed, sitting back a little as he ran a hand across the stubble along his jaw. “Sherlock. Who else?” He chuckles, “The man’s got the emotional range of a teaspoon most days, and yet…” John pauses, “You walk into a room and he straightens. Not like he's noticed you, but like his whole bloody mind system resets. He listens carefully when you speak, even when you're not saying anything case-related. Hells, the man doesn’t even cut you off—that’s… not typical.”

Eleanor blinked, lips parting slightly. “H-he d-d-doesn’t do that w-w-with you?”

“Oh, he does,” John said with a dry grin. “He cuts me off all the time. Lestrade, too. Mrs. Hudson. Hell, he even interrupted the Home Secretary once. But you—he waits. You say something, and he’ll sit there like he’s cataloguing it for reference. Sometimes I think he is.”

Eleanor lowered her gaze to her tea, stirring it absently though there was no spoon in the cup. Her voice came quieter, thoughtful. “M-m-maybe he’s j-j-just…b-b-being considerate.”

John gave a small scoff. “Sherlock Holmes is a great many things, considerate doesn’t usually make the shortlist.”

Quiet fell again—

Outside the rain drizzled on, soft against the windows whilst Rosie murmured to herself, lost in her purple triceratops. Eleanor and John settled back to quiet as well, then—BANG.

The downstairs door slammed open.

Heavy, rapid footsteps pounded upward—the unmistakable cadence of Sherlock’s long stride taking the stairs two or three at a time.

Eleanor jumped slightly, and even John looked up, his instincts twitching to attention. The living room door burst open a heartbeat later.

Sherlock stood in the threshold, coat damp and clinging at the shoulders, curls darkened and stuck to his forehead. His chest rose and fell with barely restrained urgency, eyes sweeping the flat—locking on Eleanor first, then darting to John. Rosie squealed happily at the sight of him, mumbling a few incoherent syllables, “Telly, John—"

The doctor looked flabbergasted, “What?”

“Turn on the telly,” he barked, already striding to the remote.

“Sherlock, what—”

The television flared to life as Sherlock jabbed through channels, only pausing once he landed on the evening, BBC news:

“…an investigation is underway at the scene. Fire crews responded to a third-alarm blaze shortly after 6 p.m. on the south side of Maida Vale. Witnesses reported smoke billowing from the upper floors of the Rowan Court Flats, where officials have confirmed significant structural damage. The fire was largely contained to two units…”

Eleanor froze.

“…One of the affected flats is registered to Amicia Eleanor Greyson, a local musician and administrator, who is not believed to have been home at the time of the incident. Two residents—Beatrice Coons, 82, and Logan Coons, 63—were found deceased in the neighbouring unit. The cause of the fire remains unknown. Authorities have launched a full investigation.”

She didn’t hear the rest. Her fingers had gone rigid around the mug, eyes wide and glassy, locked on the television screen as it displayed images of scorched walls, twisted metal, and ambulances.

“I spoke with Lestrade,” Sherlock began, cutting the silence that’d settled in the room. “They’ve cordoned off the entire floor. Two casualties. The fire was no doubt arson—proof of accelerants has already been found in the dumpster out back.”

“Meaning…” John shuffled to the edge of his chair, “Someone was targeting her?”

“Or something inside the flat,” He clarified. Sherlock removed his trademark coat with a sharp twist, tossing it over the back of the wooden chair by the window.

Eleanor hadn’t moved. “S-so…t-hey b-b-burned my f-flat,” she said softly—almost to herself.

“Half of it. The bedroom and library took the worst of the damage.”

He moved to the table without another word, grabbing a pen and scrap of paper from beside his laptop. His eyes were already elsewhere—processing. Calculating. “Accelerant traces in the rear dumpster suggest the ignition point was in the northeast corner—bookshelf area, likely. That side window doesn’t open properly, so they entered from the hallway. Quick job.” Sherlock’s fingers twitched over the pen. “Based on the burn pattern and the time it would take for flashover in that space—conclusion, one person inside to set the flame, another as lookout.”

“Two people?” John frowned.

“Possibly three if the fire was meant to mask something else—removal of an object, or planting something that hasn’t yet been found. A standard petrol accelerant laced with a nitrate mix. Smoky, not clean—meant to draw attention, not hide.” He turned his head toward Eleanor then, finally looking at her. “It was designed to be discovered. Either someone didn’t want what was in that flat to exist anymore, or they didn’t want you to remember it.

Sherlock rounded on the doctor, “John, they’ll let us in once the scene clears. Lestrade’s keeping it quiet for now, but you’ll need to call someone for Rosie.”

The doctor nodded grimly, “Right.” He stood with his phone to begin calling round for Molly or Mrs. Hudson.

“S-s-so…whoever t-this w-w-was, they w-waited,” she whispered. “T-they w-waited until I w-w-was out. U-until…u-u-until I w-was h-h-here.”

Sherlock didn’t move toward her—but his voice dropped, sharp edges smoothed just slightly. “They can’t reach you here, I assure it.”