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GREG LESTRADE had never worked this hard in his entire career, he blames it on the fact that there's no rest for the wicked.
London is a restless underbelly for evil, the progressive city is a nest for opportunities and exploitation. Crime rates were the highest in London than anywhere else in England, despite having one of the most active defense forces. It seems that the dense population was a perfect environment for crime to breed, from groups of pickpockets to organized mafias, they all lurk within the walls of England's capital city.
It was a good thing they have Sherlock Holmes.
Most people would tell him that he was just cutting the head of a three-headed serpent, that when it comes to crime if one head is chopped off another would always take its place. In short, it's useless. Greg didn't know what to feel about that, one thing's for sure is that he would never let them finish, the words leaving a sick feeling in his ears.
Others would tell Greg to tell him to sod off, apparently, some of his co-workers ( and by that he means Anderson) isn't so impressed by the sociopath. He for ones, think the man is a freak, which Greg would always strongly disagree with, even if he was being challenged by Sherlock's cold and brutal nature to agree.
Speaking of Sherlock, to see the self-proclaimed detective prance around with a girl who was pronounced dead didn't sound right to the man. Whenever he would see them outside his office, he would involuntarily get goosebumps against his skin. He doesn't know whether it's because he barely sees Sherlock this long with a woman or because the said woman is actually supposed to be dead.
What made it more difficult was the fact that barely anyone else knows about this.
This secret had been eating him out for days, sometimes he wished he could say it out loud during a meeting to scare the shit out of Anderson, who was falling asleep by the third PowerPoint. Most of the times he wished she would stop coming to his workspace, as awful as it sounds, he doesn't like the idea of the walking dead, pretty or not.
The only other people he knows of that are equally disturbed as him are the other two who knows about it, which were Molly Hooper and Mycroft Holmes.
He had talked about it with Molly over coffee before, not that he wanted to, ruining a nice evening with a girl he might or might not like by bringing up the subject that the bloke she fancies is off with a dead woman was the last thing he wanted. But she had brought it up, and he knows that she needs to let the burden off like he does before it consumes them both.
Many times he tried to get the subject off his mind until on a Friday afternoon, Mycroft Holmes decided to pay him a visit. This made him worried, to see the head of national security sitting in his office was not an everyday occurrence.
" I came here to talk about the girl," Mycroft had started, placing a thin paper file on his wooden table.
Greg hated at how he instantly knew who he was talking about, and he had straightened up instantly, watching as the older Holmes brother closed the curtains of his office.
" We both know that the girl should be dead," He started, "She has no reason to walk around with my brother when she was dead months ago, you saw her body decay in the morgue and you saw the bullet that stopped her heart. Yet here she is, alive, with no recollection of what happened."
Lestrade could only nod at the statement, it was nothing but the truth, but it strayed so far from what should be real and what shouldn't.
" Inside the file is everything we need to know about her,"He tapped it with a finger,"Where she came from, how she survived and why she's here. It took me and my men months to gather this, quite the work."
Greg raised an eyebrow, and he debated on whether he should reveal his hidden collection of Jack Daniel's under the table before they reviewed it or whether he should open it straight away to hide the fact that he's more terrified than he had been in years.
" You're dying to know," Mycroft urged on.
" On the contrary, I think she is," Greg replied, the joke didn't sound as smooth as he wanted it to be. He could feel beads of sweat rolling down his temples, even if they're entering November.
He felt as if this was a scene from a movie, a silent black, a white 60's movie that he and his mother used to watch. He could feel the spotlight on his head, and the sound around him began to fade like water pouring out a glass, slowly it disappeared, replaced by an uncomfortable silence that choked him with its thin slender arms.
When he flipped the cover, it felt as if a great pitcher of cold water had poured itself over his body, and he was reminded of the time when his mother would do that to wake him up for school. Yet, instead of jolting upwards with wild eyes, he only stared at the page blankly, his body frozen in place.
" It's empty."
He felt as if he was in the middle of a great big joke, and an audience was waiting to reveal itself by laughing at him in the distance. Yet, Mycroft only gave him a tight-lipped smile, as if to tell him that it was the same reaction he gave to this discovery.
The man had invested a nation's worth of money on milking even the smallest bit of information about her, yet his elite team of the brightest people around the world came back with nothing but a clean slate.
" There's nothing inside," Greg repeated, pulling the paper closer to him to make sure it wasn't the lack of sleep that's playing tricks on his mind.
" Don't worry, I heard you the first time," Mycroft replied, gliding away towards the window.
Greg thought about the sweet girl, the way her cheeks shone pink under the fluorescent lights when she greets him and the way her skin blotched blue and black under the x rays of the morgue, he thought of the way her lips would curve into a shy smile and the way her lips were chapped and stained with blood, he thought of the way she looked at Sherlock with admiration and the way she looked at him in horror.
These images collided brutally in his head like a cosmic awakening, and it shook his head to the point where he had to brace himself against the table, the two sides of her haunting his head with uncertainty.
It was like flipping a coin, not knowing which face you'd get.
Is she dead, is she alive?
Greg doesn't know anymore.
" What does this mean?"
When he finally had the courage to ask, Mycroft only looked at him sadly. The flash of emotions in his eyes barely detectable, it was fleeting, it left just as fast as it came, but Greg had his fair share of dealing with bastards who hide their emotions behind a mask to guard themselves, he wasn't a police officer for nothing.
" What do you think?"
If they were talking about anything else, Greg would've gotten frustrated over the cryptic answers, but for once Greg was pulled out of his own pond and into foreign waters.
He had never felt more confused in his life, he wasn't certain of anything, and it was all because one woman decided to exist in the little grey area of life and death.
That night GREG LESTRADE had a hard time sleeping, he blames it on the fact that there's NO REST FOR THE WICKED.
