Friday, 15 August 2014

BBC Sherlock Holmes one shot - Smudges of Charcoal

My first BBC Sherlock attempt, he's a difficult one but I think I did ok.
As ever, read, comment and enjoy!
.x.Hidden.x.Winter.x.



                “Sherlock you can’t MAKE her!” John exclaimed for the umpteenth time, obviously frustrated with his sociopath flatmate.
                “She needs this scan.” He answered back.
                “She needs it? Her? Please Sherlock don’t pretend you’re thinking about her welfare, you’re the one who wants this scan.”
                “The investigation cannot progress without the data from the scan.”
                “Well it doesn’t look like the scan is going to happen, so find a way around it Sherlock, use that brain of yours!”
                Sherlock pulled at his hair staring aimlessly to try and think of another option. He still wore his coat from having just come back from visiting Lestrade. He threw himself onto the sofa, then stood back up and continued pacing around the flat.
                “John you’re a medical man, persuade her!”
                “Are you insane?! You want me to make a frightened young girl undergo an invasive procedure just so you can satisfy your morbid curiosity? No, Sherlock. No.”
                He turned to the doctor, “It’s not my morbid curiosity. The rest of the case depends on the scar that resides inside that girl. The only way to see it is that specific ultrasound. It HAS to happen John!”
                “Well leave me out of it, I’ll have nothing to do with it.”
                Sherlock ran his fingers through his hair again, frustrated with the turn of events. He cast a scathing glance at his messy apartment. Paper covered the walls outlining the case he was working on, there was just one big empty hole in the middle, the last clue. With that clue he would have the whole thing unraveled, he would win. He just needed this ONE more clue.
                And that girl was standing in his way.
*
                Half an hour later he was stood at a door. He rapped at the wood and waited. With a creak, it opened slightly. He saw bright blue eyes and straight dark brown hair. A gold chain danced in front of her eyes as it held the door closed.
                “Mr. Holmes?” She said.
                “Yes, may I come in?”
                She seemed taken aback, but closed the door and removed the chain. Holding the door wide, she wordlessly invited Sherlock into her house.
                He looked around, analysing everything. Her flat was barely furnished. There was a cheap table and chairs, bistro style. There was an orchid placed in a clear vase in the centre of the table. They were placed to look out of the window which was quite large considering the size of the rest of the place. His shoes tapped on the floor and then he saw her trainers placed by the door. He silently removed his own shoes and placed them next to hers. There was nothing on the walls, they lay barren with the white walls stretching from floor to ceiling. There was a rug in the middle of the room.
                Her kitchen and bathroom followed the same pattern, bare, clean surfaces, nothing to show. Her bedroom was an entire new story. Papers littered the walls, drawings of everything. Streetlamps, benches, busses, faces.
                Sherlock turned to her, “photographic memory?”
                She nodded and he grinned, she was getting more interesting with every rock he overturned.
                He started to go through each picture while he completed his mental process of her.
                “Your family is all dead, you moved to London with your last savings to try and get a fresh start. Because of complex circumstances you have no degree to your name and this keeps you down at lower levels of work. However, your photographic memory and heightened intelligence make it hard to cope so you spend your time drawing everything. It releases the pressure, your beautiful memory demands to be used. The rings under your eyes suggest insomnia but I disagree, you choose not to sleep. Something happened, nightmares maybe? Your house is bare, you are prepared to run at a moment’s notice. None of these pictures are you, you have grown accustomed to leaving no trace of yourself behind, you have ran from dangers before.” He spoke more to himself, but then it dawned on him.
                “You’ve met these people before. That’s how your family died, isn’t it? You moved to London to escape them but they followed you here. You draw everything so that in the case of your death, someone like me could come here and put the pictures together and solve it. You don’t sleep because you are waiting for them to find you.”
                He looked her in the eyes, blue meet blue as his eyes sought answers from her.
                “Correct on all accounts, Mr. Holmes. I am impressed.” She said, her eyes not wavering.
                “There is one thing I don’t understand, and that is why-”
                “Why I won’t go through with the procedure.” She finished his sentence, and then glanced away from his unblinking stare.
                There was a long silence until Sherlock’s phone beeped.
                “I have to go.” He said. She nodded.
                “I will be back tonight.” She opened her mouth to protest, “you need some sleep.” He said, putting her argument to rest.
*
                “Complete waste of my time.” Sherlock mumbled to himself as he knocked on her door.
                She was there in a t-shirt and sweatpants, her hair messy and dripping onto her shoulders, obviously just finished a shower. Once again she wordlessly opened the door and let him pass, her bare feet padding after him. He sat on the bistro chair and looked around, not a single thing was different from earlier. She barely spoke to him, a fact that he was comfortable with. People nowadays were so obsessed to fill any silence with mindless babble, this was refreshing.
                This became a routine of theirs, he would go every morning and they would drink a cup of tea together, sat at her bistro chairs and staring out of the large window. He would then leave and go about his day, and then come back in the evening, leaving just before she fell asleep.
                One ordinary evening, she answered her door to let him in, and then walked back to her living room. It was drastically different from his visit that morning, sheets of paper littered the floor around where she was laying on the carpet. He didn’t speak, he knew how annoying it was when someone interrupted his work. He sat on one of the cheap bistro chairs and watched her.
                Her dark hair swept over her shoulder and brushed the floor but she didn’t seem to notice or care. Her thin fingers were coated in black charcoal, as were marks on her cheeks from where she had brushed hair out of her face. She bit her lip as she drew the charcoal across the page in light strokes. Sherlock stopped for a moment when he looked at the pictures. They were all him.
His hands as they brushed her table.
His face as he looked at her pictures on the wall.
A partial view of his face. The chain across the middle showed that it was her view of him when he first knocked on her door.
His eyes as they burned for answers.
Picture upon picture of him, and this was what gave him the most information about her. She was hiding something, the reason that she wouldn’t get the scan. For her to be drawing so much meant that she was worried that he was close to the answer. But then again, she wasn’t hiding what she was doing, which meant that she had accepted that he would find out.
Perfect.
Hours later she put down the pencil.
“You haven’t eaten.” He commentated.
“Neither have you.” She remarked.
“I don’t eat when I’m working.”
“Neither do I.”
His mouth tilted up in a grin as he followed her into the kitchen. She flicked the kettle and placed a teabag in a cup. He shook his head as she offered one to him.
“Why don’t you do the scan?” He asked moments later.
Still turned away she lifted the cup to her lips and took a sip before placing it back on the counter.
“They won’t let me.” She answered.
This stunned him into silence. He had considered this possibility for the briefest of seconds before dismissing it. There were only two reasons that were possible. First, she was pregnant, but considering the state of flight she was in that was highly unlikely. The only remaining option…
“You’re a virgin.” He said.
Her cheeks tinted the lightest pink but her skin was pale enough for him to notice. Based on her appearance he had not even considered this a possible option, surely she had had romantic encounters in her past.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He asked, moving towards her. She turned towards him, eyes memorising every plane of light, every shadow as it crossed his face as he neared her.
His hands skimmed her arms to rest at the base of her jaw.
“I could have helped you fix this a long time ago.”           
               


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