Find Me (BBC Sherlock Fan Fiction)

Chapter 12

'Then we'll smash it.' John had already suggested this about a dozen times and Sherlock was reaching the end of his patience.

'I can't smash it- she'll have put some kind of acid or explosive inside that will destroy the contents if I break it open. And even if she hasn't she knows I won't risk it.'

'Have you tried talking to it? Maybe it's set to open at a certain sound frequency?'

'I've tried talking to it,' he confirmed, although he really wished he didn't have to admit to that.

John was making an effort to keep his face straight. 'What did you say to it?'

Sherlock said nothing, simply glared into the fire.

'You didn't, did you? You did? You told the box 'I love you?' John snorted, clamped a hand to his mouth.

'It's not set to a sound frequency,' Sherlock snarled.

'Then DNA? Does it trigger the opening mechanism if your DNA is on it? Have you...' John was trying to get the words out through barely supressed laughter. 'Have you kissed it?'

Sherlock stalked to the window, picked up his violin and attacked the opening bars of a Paganini solo.

Behind him John had stopped talking, and from the muffled sounds he was making was doubled over with laughter. 'Have you bought it flowers? Taken it out for dinner? Sherlock – have you slept with it?'

He slammed down the violin, caught himself at the last moment. 'It isn't locked with DNA; it doesn't open when I touch it.'

'Sorry, sorry.' John waved his hands around, flopped back into his armchair. 'It's just that this is so...Alright. I'm calm. Let's approach this logically, the same way you approach everything else.' He put his hands together as if he were praying, rested his chin on his index fingers.

Slumped in the opposite chair, Sherlock disliked the role reversal intensely.

'So how are you, Sherlock Holmes, going to demonstrate you're in love?'

'I don't do 'love'.'

'Well, that's not logical for a start. How do you explain managing not to kill Mycroft all these years? You must love him on some level. And your sister, you saved her because you showed her you loved her. Isn't that the difference between you and Euros anyway – without the emotional context she was interested in, without love, you'd be locked up in an institution the same way she is. You're capable of love, but you hide it better than anyone else I've ever met.'

'I'd rather smash the box than have this conversation. Maybe there's enough explosive in there to kill me.'

'I even understand why – your first experience of caring about someone else resulted in him being murdered. That would make anyone think twice about showing their emotions.'

'Is this helping? In any rational sense?'

John stood up and marched over to the window with a determined tread, retrieving something from a drawer and throwing it across the room. Sherlock caught it by reflex, replacing it safely in his pocket where it couldn't get damaged.

'What do you need that for?' John asked. 'You remember everything. You have perfect recall when you want to. So why do you keep Irene Adler's old phone? Sentiment – that's why. Love – that's why. Deep down, you're just the same as the rest of us, but you're too arrogant to show it.'

Realisation jerked Sherlock out of the chair. 'Just because I don't talk about something doesn't mean it doesn't exist,' he said, moving past John and reaching into the same drawer. 'Just because something is different, or unconventional, or unique, doesn't make it wrong.'

'I never said it did. She's a lesbian dominatrix and you're certainly different. I'm not judging.'

Sherlock looked at the item he'd removed from the drawer for an instant, then pushed the end of it into the tiny join that sealed one side of the puzzle box to the other and ran it all the way round, replacing the box on the desk.

'What do you have there?'

Sherlock opened his palm to show a bent and withered piece of reed, still knotted into the recognisable shape of a heart. 'A birthday present. It arrived on the doorstep a year before the box did. It isn't useful, it serves no purpose, it's superfluous to my daily life in every way. But,' he deposited it carefully back in the drawer. 'It's a unique gift. I didn't have anything like it before and I doubt I ever will again. I'm not going to throw it away. That drawer is bombproof, by the way, you might want to put your passport in it this time in case my sister drives another drone through the window.'

Behind him on the desk a fizzing noise came from the puzzle box and a few bubbles of a white, evil smelling substance leaked from one corner. Sherlock picked it up, examined it closely. 'Acetone soaked into the leaf reacting with the glue. That should be long enough.' He twisted both sides at the same time and watched a paper wrapped key clatter onto the desk. A mixture of trepidation and excitement he'd felt before lent a tremor to his hand and caught his normally steady breathing as he opened the page to read the message.

'Well?' asked John. 'Another clue?'

'An address. She's been living two streets away.' He tightened his hand around the key, answered the question John hadn't asked 'Well, of course I'm going.'

The Postman's Daughter by Sally Anne Palmer is available now on Amazon.