Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter CV - Forget Me Not

-Millie-

~~~~~~

"Tell me something."

I look up, startled from my lethargy; it is a deliciously warm evening, sweet and honeyed, the sky softened by morphine and mottled like peach skin. I had been sitting cross-legged on one of the balconies, savouring the feeling of being slightly removed from my head – it wasn't out-of-body as such, more a pleasant sense of detachment, as if my consciousness were being held just above my skull, suspended like sediment in a stilled stretch of water.

It has been a long, timeless month.

I have spent it drifting in and out of emotion; there have been days of familiar numbness, where I indulge in inertia and lie unfeeling, morphine's slave, and there have been surprising days, days of intensity, spikes of something that feels suspiciously like contentment. I don't bother engaging in self-analysis. There is little point diagnosing myself mad. The recent heat has forced us both to slow – I enjoy these rare moments of warmth as much as he detests them; I pass the time on balconies and in the gardens, hazy-headed, while he basks under the ceiling fans, shirt-sleeves rolled, hair spiked with sweat, muttering darkly about the superiority of Russian winters.

He sits beside me now, on the balcony floor. I rest both palms on my knees. I dimly remember the time such proximity would spark sick fear in the pit of my stomach, but the memory is very much an echo; a faint ebb of feeling that I am capable of dismissing, and overriding.

I realise I have left him unanswered. I turn my head drowsily, and ask, "Tell you what?"

"Anything."

My expression betrays me. He laughs, and says, "You are looking like I have asked you to kill a man, myshka."

"It's a very ambiguous demand."

"Then I will start." He settles back against the wall, and reaches for the cigarette packet I know he keeps in his left pocket. He exhales once. The smoke is purple in the evening light; it curls, feline and fluid, upwards, before fading. "Tchaikovsky. Swan Lake. It is my favourite song."

I stay silent for a while, watching the paper cylinder burn. He waits, his inquisition non-verbal; there is ash steadily collecting at the tip of his cigarette, and I maintain my silence until it begins to fall.

"Winter," I say, slowly. "By Vivaldi."

He smiles. "I know it well. Colour?"

"Lilac and grey."

"Flower?"

"Forget-me-nots, I think." I close my eyes, letting the sunlight tint my eyelids red. "You don't need to tell me yours."

He laughs again. "I am an open book, as you say. You read?"

"Oh, yes."

"What do you read?"

"Journals, case studies." I almost smile. "You like fiction."

"I have lost my mystery," he says, his tone a mockery of mourning. "You will tire of me yet."

"Am I wrong?"

"Hет, нет. You know it is true."

He takes my hand, his fingers warm, and turns it over in his palm, tracing the notches of my knuckles. I make a noise of affirmation at the back of my throat, then ask, "Do you have a favourite?"

He considers, and, when he speaks, there is a note of hesitation in his voice, perhaps embarrassment.

"I do not know the title in English, moya myshka."