If You Love Me, Get Clean

Chapter Thirty Two

July 2016

I can't get my head around it
I keep feeling smaller and smaller
I'm under the gun again
I need my girl

Alice hasn't moved since Mycroft phoned.

Wait for him, he'd said. I'm sending him home in one of my cars. Don't worry about anything else. I'm dealing with it.

She isn't entirely sure what exactly Mycroft's version of 'dealing with it' was, but she doesn't think she could move even if she wants to. So she waits. She draws her knees up, hugging them to her chest, wiping her face on the fabric of her pyjama bottoms.

Rosie. She should check on Rosie. But she just... can't. She looks towards the baby monitor, the lights not remotely flickering to show any sign of sound, so she allows herself to simply sit. By the time the sun comes up life could be very different for all of them, but especially Rosie, especially John.

Alice closes her eyes against the new wave of tears she can feel forming, trying to force them away. Now isn't the time to breakdown. She has people to take care of.

The lock on the front door turns, clicks, thuds. The door closes. The handle is lifted. She hears a shuddered breath. Footsteps.

He stops just over the threshold, refusing to look in her direction, his hands balling into fists then releasing. His eyes close. He breathes.

She doesn't know what to do. She needs him to give her some kind of sign, because this moment is so fraught, so fragile, that one wrong word and it all falls apart. He falls apart.

"Are you really there?" He asks, his voice more scared than she's ever heard it before.

"Of course I am," she replies, equally as soft. "Where else would I be?"

He nods once. Sharp.

"Sherlock–"

"It was my fault."

Alice blinks. "No it wasn't."

His eyes are still closed. His head turns farther away. The expression on his face is so pained. "It was. It was my fault. I should have– I should have shut my big mouth for once in my life and... she told me, she tried to... 'Sherlock, don't' she said, but I didn't listen. I never listen."

"It's not– It wasn't your fault– You couldn't have–"

"You weren't there," he grits out. "You don't know."

He's right. "Mycroft explained."

He scoffs, his eyes at last opening. They're rimmed red. "You always see the best in me. It's time to let that go."

"Never."

He finally, finally, looks at her. He's utterly wrecked, that's obvious, but there's something else simmering beneath the surface.

"You're a good man–" he growls, beginning to pace in front of the wall where the television is mounted. "You are a good man," she reiterates. "This was... It was–"

"My fault!"

"No."

"Alice, I really don't want to fight right now, I don't have it in me."

"Then don't. Just listen to me," he sighs but says nothing more. "You had no idea that this would happen. You're brilliant, you are, and your mind is incredible, but you can't see the future. You can't see ahead to any and all outcomes. You can predict, you can conjure potential scenarios, but you can't know," she lowers her feet to the ground, but doesn't stand, she doesn't think he's ready for physical contact. "It was horrible and it was petty and it was stupid, but it wasn't your fault, and you know it. You know it deep down."