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┕━☽【❖】☾━┙
The next morning, Sherlock woke up to a raging hangover, and an absolute clatter of noise in the kitchen. He slowly got up and threw on a sapphire blue robe, before being met with Adelaide, covered in blood again.
"What the hell did you do this time?!" He rubbed his forehead in annoyance, before noticing the massive blood stain on the floor that she obviously tried to hide. "Good morning to you too, sunshine." She shoved the bloody fire poker in the bin. "That's... what the third time i've been assassinated? My mother needs to step up her game." Sherlock wasn't laughing at her jokes. "You killed someone?! In my house?!" He gawked. Adelaide chuckled a little. "Don't worry, I have stuff for cleaning that, and if it doesn't come off i'll but you a new one." She dismissed his reasonable reaction. "Where is the body?" He asked, not really wanting to know. "Burned, ash and dust by now." Sherlock sat down and rubbed his eyes. "In the... 8 hours I was asleep, you managed to kill someone, burn their corpse and clean most of it up?" He scolded. "It's what women do best." She joked, Sherlock forming a straight line on his mouth, displeased with her lack of empathy. She noticed this and scoffed.
"He tried to kill me! What did you expect me to do? Talk him into a tea party?" She raised her voice, slightly annoyed at the way he expected her to deal with him. "I expected you to come get me!" He snapped back. "You were drunk off your arse! You would have died with him and one body is better than two!" There was a tension-filled silence. All that was heard was the chatter of people heading to work on the roads, and the carriages rolling down the cobble streets.
"You decided to keep me here. I can leave with no fuss. Yet you decide to deal with me." She stared straight at him, a raging look on her face, he only stared st the bouquet of orchids on the window, not meeting her furious gaze. "I thought there was less chance of you dying in here than out there. But I stand corrected." Adelaide rolled her eyes. "How abnormal." She mumbled. While Sherlock just retreated back to his bedroom. Adelaide was livid, she nearly killed herself trying to get him to bed last night, and then was nearly killed again because he refuses to tell her where the front door key is. The whole day she felt melancholic, shallow. Nobody spoke to her for the rest of the day, she came to the realisation that this wasn't much different from her life before she even planned on running. She was ignored, and if she wasn't ignored she was fought with, and the whole time, she'd feel like a burden, a weight someone had to carry.
She scanned the bookshelf of various books. She had read most of them and even reread some. This isolation was getting to her, she would find herself staring out windows for hours, dreaming of joy, dreaming of pain, dreaming of freedom. She would rather be free and in danger than safe and restrained. That's when she decided she would do what she had to, she would do what would make her happy, even if it meant she was endangered.
She waited until all that was heard was the quiet snores in the bedroom, and the only thing outside was the ambient street lamps along with the twinkling stars. She snatched some money, food and a book for the road, and creeped over to the large window, She carefully swung it open and used the street lamp as a sort of ledge for her to hang on and guide herself to the ground. The streets were quiet and empty, the quiet snores of the beggars in the dark alleys she passed. The oil in the streetlights slowly dying out.
••●••
Sherlock felt strange the moment he opened his eyes. It was quiet. Too quiet.
The birds chirped their early morning song, people were opening up their shops, the smell of freshly baked goods filled the street from the chain of bakeries on the road. But there was no racket in the kitchen, no slap of a book on the bookshelf, no obnoxiously loud click clack of heels. Silence.
Sherlock darted out of bed and quickly checked his home, and to his suspicion, Adelaide was nowhere to be found. There was no note, no trace of her even being at his house. He threw on his coat and boots and wandered around the street. She could have left, all the signs were pointing to it. But, there was still doubt. What if she was kidnapped? What if she snuck out for a walk and never made it back? Sherlock sighed. Is this what his clients felt like? He walked past the alley of homeless people who had just woken up.
"Morning Mr Holmes." The little girl who sat with her father on a burlap rag, surrounded by a few tins of what looked to be a soup combination. The little girl always greeted him, he never really greeted back. But before he could leave, the little girl stood in front of him.
"A lady told me to give you this." She handed him a neatly sealed letter between her frail, dirty fingertips. Sherlock accepted it gratefully.
'Dearest Sherlock'
'You hunted me, helped me and opened your home to me, and I am grateful for that, but a life of safety and concealment is one I cannot live. I do hope you understand. I am healthy, I am fine, I am free.'
He crumpled the letter in his fist. Anger seeping through him. He wasn't going to accept that, he couldn't. He would never admit it, but he'll search to the ends of the earth to find her, no matter what it takes.
