No Vacancy at 221c: A BBC Sherlock Fanfic

Unexpected

Was that a twitch?

Sherlock felt himself pulled gently out of sleep by something. He had fallen asleep, bloody hand and all, after coming home. It had to still be 2 or 3 in the morning.

There it was again. Why was the bed quivering?

Sherlock reached forward and turned the soft bedside lamp on, painfully breaking the delicate scabs that had begun to form. Slowly, he turned around to look at the left side of the bed, which he had never been fond of sleeping on. All that was there was a lump of blankets covered with the coat he had carelessly deserted. Tiredly, he reached to turn off the light when the mass moved. The detective froze, still pushing away the tendrils of sleep that had wrapped themselves around his mind. Hesitantly he reached forward and flicked the wool garment aside in one swift, sure motion. He was startled to see a head of hair, very dark in the dim light. Whoever it was quivered and shook like they were suffering from hypothermia. Her face (Sherlock assumed it was female) was covered in the dark strands of tangled hair.

Now quite unnerved and more than curious, Sherlock threw the blankets off of the figure and squinted in the dark. It was indeed a female as Sherlock had first thought, and she had an impossibly small figure. She looked as though she would break with the own shaking of her tiny, tiny hands. Maybe she was very young; a tall child or a young teen?

Gently, Sherlock shook her frail shoulder and silently willed her to turn towards him, so he could identify this person. A small cry and then a whimper responded to his touch as she recoiled from him, becoming amazingly small. "No-no it's not morning yet!" Sherlock could just make out.

But that voice seemed eerily familiar. Almost harshly, he reached across the bed and turned her head towards him. What he saw took his breath away. She grimaced as though she awaited a blow, and kept her eyes shut, but Sherlock could make out the corpse of who this used to be.

"Celestia?" He didn't dare speak above a whisper. Suddenly the shaking stopped and her face went slack, though her eyes remained tightly shut. "How did you get his voice?" she finally demanded in a quavering shell of a voice. "When will you be through with me, just go away, Sebastian!" She scrambled to sit up, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth gently.
Sherlock could feel his breath getting stronger and his heart racing. Why would she think it was him? "It's me! Not Sebastian, it was just a dream!" His head was spinning with hope and something he couldn't quite name.

A surprisingly strong voice, as rough as gravel spit back, "How dare you."

Sherlock's face lit in alarm as she lifted her head, her eyes still stubbornly shut, and dark hair framing hollow cheeks and scarred face. "When will you be through? I haven't struggled, haven't fought for months! Just tell me how you got his voice!" Celeste's voice cracked and sobs choked her words.

"You've taken everything, just let me die!" Sherlock's heart broke in that moment and all disbelief and joy was replaced with rage at what Sebastian had done, whatever that was.

Slowly, cautiously, he climbed back onto the bed and sat beside her. His arms went around her, ignoring the tremors they caused as he pulled the tiny human toward him.

"It's me," he whispered. "It's really me, please, you have to believe that!"

"Stop it!" She scrambled backward and slid off onto the freezing floor. Another sob erupted as she shook her head violently. "Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!" She quieted just a minute, "stop teasing me, please. All you do is dangle hope in front of me and pull it away when I get too close-just kill me you coward!"

Sherlock didn't know what to do. This wasn't anything near how he had hoped it would be. It was waking up in the darkest hours of the night to find out the one you wanted most to see had been twisted so much so that she didn't even believe you could actually be real.
Without thinking, he went and fetched his violin and returned to the room where Celestia still rocked back and forth on the floor. As he played he put all the passion and fear and sorrow that had plagued him that year. It jumped from high joyous notes to heart breaking minors. He played for her.

When Sherlock had finished, he turned to see she had found his coat (somehow without opening her eyes) and was now running her hands over it reverently. She held it to her and breathed deeply.

Celestia's next words were so conflicted, showing the struggle between logic and sentiment that was burning inside of her. "I want to believe it's you. But-if it isn't then I'll have made a fool out of myself and given myself an extra dose of heartache." She grabbed two handfuls of hair and yanked them as hard as she could. "Ugh! So many things swirling around in here, it hurts!"

Sitting on the bed, making sure to be a few feet away from her on the floor, the detective began to speak. "I remember when you first came. So confident, but I could see the weariness and fear beneath the surface. Your eyes could always tell a story. And that day they told me to help you. When I saw you in action at the warehouse I was relieved to find you willing... and smart.

"No matter what happened, you never complained. I never quite got that. You understood that things were your choice and never, ever, placed the blame on someone else. I must admit I've been blaming myself for that night for a year, wishing I had made you stay, but I don't think it would have turned out much better. Now that I consider it, I remember you saying that you wanted to go, even after I reminded you of the danger. And-and you even said-now this was awfully odd-you said 'What if this is goodbye?' I never once considered that."

On and on he spoke, his quiet voice resonating through the room. Silently Celeste stood up and climbed onto the bed, crawling towards him. Gently she reached out and touched his face, feeling the prominent cheekbones. "It is you, isn't it?" came the breath of a question. The fragile tone turned into panic: "He hasn't gotten you too, has he?" Sherlock reached up and grasped her hand, squeezing its frail bones ever so slightly.

"No. I'm safe-we're safe. No one's going to hurt you, okay?"

Celeste nodded her head slightly.

"You can open your eyes you know," he suggested gently. She shut them even tighter and shook her head, burying it in Sherlock's shoulder.

So away they drifted; into sleep, into the night.