We're the Same - Sherlock Prompt

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DISCLAIMER:
I do not own Sherlock or any of its characters

The man sits across the cafe from me, watching the waitress serving a table next to him. This was my fifth day in London and I had been watching him since my first day here. I can almost see his mind working, but he looks bored. These people are too easy, too boring. I can attest to that. I had traveled all the way from California to meet him. Now when I say meet him, what I really mean is figuring out everything I can without having to interact with him. The famous (or infamous depending on your perspective) Sherlock Holmes. My whole family had rejected my dream to meet Holmes, telling me it was foolish to spend so much valuable money and time on someone like him. They worry about me and rarely let me do anything this drastic on my own. I've never been able to talk, a consequence of my voice box never forming, but I get by fine with ASL and my trusty notepad and pen. Now don't get the wrong impression, I'm not some fangirl that wants to marry him or anything. All my life, all I've wanted to do was find someone like me, and I'm not talking about being mute. So far he's the only person I have ever heard of with abilities like mine. Some might call it a disability; a disorder; but I call it a superpower. His thick blue scarf and black trench coat gave him a mysterious look. I look away quickly as his gaze drifts dangerously close to where I am sitting. One of the waitress's approach me.

"Can I get you anything?" She asks, smacking gum in her mouth loudly. I resist the urge to glare at her. I nod, scribble down my order, and hand the yellow, lined paper to her. She gives me a strange look but takes the order all the same. I always carry my notepad and pen with me in case the person I needed to communicate with doesn't know ASL. I return my gaze to Holmes and held back a gasp of surprise. He was staring right at me, light blue eyes studying me and my features. I get up before my face can turn red and rushed into the bathroom. I hurry past the girls fixing their makeup or doing their hair and locked myself in a stall. Why am I reacting like this? I shouldn't care that he was watching me like I watched him. I compose myself and exit the stall and eventually the bathroom. I start to grab up my things then freeze, noticing the folded up paper tucked in between the screen and keyboard of my closed laptop. I glance as subtly as possible toward where Holmes had been sitting but he was gone. I sigh with relief and finish gathering my bag and laptop then left, not caring what the waitress did with my meal.

- - - - - -

You confuse me. No one does that.
~SH

I read over the ink-scribbled words in the confines of my apartment. I almost felt triumphant. I, a mute American girl from California, had stumped the greatest detective known to man. A small smile creeps up onto my face at the thought. His handwriting is sharp and edgy, while still elegant. It's small and squished together like someone had pressed the letters into one another. Ideas and thoughts about his personality and life suddenly bombard my mind. Absentminded yet focused, strange, disconnected, stubborn, confident... I looked around for a piece of paper and grabbed a black ink pen. Smack-dab in the middle of the pure white sheet, I gingerly write:

       We're the same.
~HR

I smile at the note I've written. I seal it in an envelope writing out 221B Baker Street and Sherlock Holmes legibly across the back, leaving out the return address. I love being mysterious. Let him guess my name, let him try to figure me out. I'll do just the same to him.

- - - - - -

"Sherlock, I fetched the mail. There's one here for you!" John calls from down the stairs. I open my eyes with a start. It takes the mail 20 minutes to get here after their second mail run of the day started at 4:15 pm each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, however, you had to give the mail woman an extra ten minutes because she stopped for food before hitting my street. I had left the mystery mute girl the note at 3:45 pm, so if I counted in the time it took her to come back, find the note, return home, read it, contemplate it, then reply, send it, then wait until John went out at 5:00 to get the mail...It has to be her. I leap off the couch, whisking the pile of mail away from John and rifling through it.

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