Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter LXXXVII - Hangman's Twine

The room is well-lit, if a little cramped; the ceilings are freshly painted, the rugs aired, the walls white-washed. Against the furthest of these walls stands a stove – old-fashioned; they haven't been provided an upgrade by the Politburo yet – with a temperamental gas hob that spits acrid fumes whenever it is forced to function. The room teeters on the cusp of poverty: the floor is clean, but the wood is splintered, worn pale in places, damp from trodden snow; the wallpaper is greying green, thickly layered, peeling at the corners and exposing the yellow paint of the preceding coat. At the centre of the little room is a table – a desk of sorts, low and made of dark, burgundy wood, the sort that retains the fine grease swirls of resting thumbprints – and a chair.

At that chair, sits a woman.

Her face is strained, made harsh by circumstances but still in possession of its previous beauty: pale-skinned, hair bronze-tinted and fine and fastened loosely in a low bun. Several strands have worked their way free of the ribbon that fixes them in place. It's the sharpness that gives her former beauty a faintly pained demeanour – a pinch between her brows, a lack of colour in her cheeks, the way her skin stretches taut over the thin bridge of her nose. She sighs heavily, adjusts her glasses and shuffles the paper on the desk. It brings only bad news. Party failings. Recent unrest. Violence in the South. Poisonous propaganda in the North.

Sitting in the corner of the room, with his back turned to the woman at the table, is a boy. He's young, no older than five, and too small for his age – although this is exacerbated by his clothing, which, whilst clean and well-pressed, is two sizes too big for him. It's second hand, given to him by his mother's friend; a pair of faded grey shorts, knee-length and patched several times over, a heavy roll-neck, bottle green, knitted and folded back at the cuffs. He's bent over something small and white in his lap, studying it, his tongue between his teeth in concentration. 

He holds a doll up to the window.

The light crystallises the pigment in his eyes. They're brilliantly blue, pale to the brink of translucent; little discs of frosted glass. They squint, then reduce to slits as he frowns. She doesn't look right. He spent all day trimming her hair, snipping and sticking ribbon to her wooden body to replace the grim dress she came in – but it hasn't worked. Her hair isn't symmetrical. It makes her painted face look lopsided. The white ribbon reminds him of the bandages he saw on his father's hands, after he'd accidentally rested against the stove surface.

His bottom lip starts to tremble as he looks at his disjointed doll. He wants to turn back time, start again, stop himself from ruining her–

Vanya? says a voice, close to his ear. Why are you crying?

She's slipped into the room without him noticing. He looks up tearfully, holding his doll out to explain what his vocabulary cannot. She takes it from him and turns it over in her hand.

Poor thing, she laughs. You've cut off all her hair.

It's too much for him to bear; he begins to sob, his thin shoulders heaving beneath his jumper, utterly crestfallen.

His sister takes his fist in her palm and guides him to his feet, and, when he sinks to his knees again under the weight of his weeping, she picks him up and carries him over her shoulder, out of the kitchen, into the small backroom that doubles as their sleeping space.

She sets him down on the bed, sits him up, wipes his tears with her thumbs.

Don't cry, she says. I'll buy you a new doll, a better one, with gold hair–

No.

No?

He sniffs, and daubs his eyes with the backs of his hands. I don't want her to have gold hair.