Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter III - Virtue

-Millie-

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I am re-ordering the contents of the kitchen cupboard — an unassuming, habitual process that satisfies my compulsion to organise the disorganised — when the sound of paper being pushed through the letterbox catches my attention.

It catches my attention because it is a Friday afternoon and we do not receive post outside of the typical mailing times. I step back from the cupboard, dusting my palms down on the chiffon of my blouse and listening for the telltale shuffle of slipper soles on the floorboards downstairs.

Sure enough, I hear Mrs Hudson pause to read the address, then ascend the stairs with stilted footsteps. The post is placed in our personal collection point; a small, brown box with brass hinges that sits on the shelf outside our door and collects all written requests from Sherlock's private clients.

I finish lining our assortment of mugs, ensuring that they sit in colour order — handles angled to the right, labels picked off, height taken into account — and, since Sherlock is currently sleeping, exit the room to collect our unprecedented post.

I pick up the envelope and turn it over in my hands. There is no stamp or recipient name, save for '221B' scrawled in ink italics across the seal.

This was delivered by hand. Unusual, in central London.

I tear the top of the envelope in one, neat movement and shake it, expecting folded paper to slip out into my waiting palm.

Instead, I get a handful of polaroid photographs, falling to the floor in a flurry of greyscale imagery.

I stop breathing entirely.

The distant tick of the kitchen clock marks out each slow second spent suspended in shock.

I bend down and pick up the nearest photograph, my pulse forcing blood through the cold constriction around my chest, hammering at the internal tissue of my ears.

There is no doubt about it.

It is a picture of me.

More specifically, a picture of me featuring content that could, if found in the wrong hands, result in my immediate imprisonment.

I look around, as if expecting to see the shadowy outline of the sender standing at the bottom of the stairs. Of course, the landing remains resolutely empty. My paranoia is quelled by reluctant rationality, and, satisfied that I am indeed alone, I turn my attention back to the oblivious girl in the photographs.

I am thoroughly unrecognisable; the Millie Shon in my hands can't be more than nineteen years old, her face concealed by a limp mess of matted curls, her clothes filthy, her eyes downcast, her expression focused intently on the tip of a needle piercing the little blue vein branching at the crook of her elbow.

The floor lurches beneath my feet.

I can't let Sherlock see these.

I scrabble at the ground, collecting the images together and sifting through them; me curled up beneath the orange folds of my father's coat, me inspecting my knuckles through the holes in my gloves, me begging for spare change at a street corner, me sitting in a cartel, smiling with languid unawareness, head tipped back, eyes shut, throat flexed in a frozen depiction of indescribable pleasure.

I do not recall having these pictures taken. The first twenty-three years of my life passed in a hallucinatory haze of cocaine – they could have been taken at any time, by anyone, and I would not have noticed.

Some of the photographs are blurred, some are unfocused, and all of them have been taken at unprofessional angles – I know that this was no journalist looking for artistic inspiration. This was me being followed, unknowingly, by someone with a knack for slipping through my memory unnoticed.