Chapter Text
"Go upstairs," Sherlock said, grabbing onto James's arm. "Find my mother. Take her to the gatehouse, do not leave her side."
Never in a million years had Sherlock ever imagined trusting a friend with his mother. First of all, the idea that he would even have a friend had been laughable for more than half of his life. He was aware of the type of person he was, rude at best and disconcerting at worst, the type of person you most certainly wouldn't claim to be close with for too long, lest it give you a bad reputation as well.
Secondly, he had never imagined trusting someone enough to let them get close to his mother. It wasn't shame, though he imagined it looked like it was to anyone in the know. It was fear. Fear that they would judge her, fear that letting anyone in like that could be dangerous to her well being.
Fear that they would see the truth about Sherlock.
Because if his mother was unwell, what did that make him? The odd boy who could never focus on the right things? Who saw things that weren't there and spent more time in his own mind than anywhere else? Grief might have been the catalyst for his mother's break, but what was his? Was it simply how he was born, something sewn deep into his blood and vile?
For a moment James looked as though he would protest. But there wasn't time for that, not when his father was in the house, and who knows what he could have been doing while they were outside.
Rainwater ran down his face as he headed towards the noise in the kitchen. He tried to wipe it off with his soaked coat, but it was no use. Everything was soaked through, his white long sleeve transparent and his trousers heavy with water.
He lifted the shovel like a sword. In another life it might have been funny, like a little boy playing at being a knight. But he only knew this life, the one where he had stood above the grave of his sister and realized his entire life had been a lie. And the only thing he had to make it better, to get the answers he needed, was the shovel in front of him.
The kitchen was warm, the fire low but enough to see by. He'd always enjoyed being in the kitchen as a child, watching his mother help Mrs. Crowle make special treats for them or experimenting with things with his father. Mycroft had tried to encourage him when he was little, saying he might even become a chef one day, right before Sherlock promptly burned his hand on an open flame.
"Here, dry yourself off, you've had quite a shock," his father said, slapping a towel down on the table. His tone was bitter, angry in a way he had so rarely ever heard from his father.
For all of their flaws, his mother and father had never been the type to raise their voices, at least not at the children.
Still, that didn't change the fact that he had a gun pointed straight at Sherlock.
He couldn't help but freeze at the weapon. So many people in the last few days had threatened him, beat him, pointed a weapon at him, but… He'd never expected it from his own father.
Then again, if his father had lied about Beatrice, what wasn't he willing to do?
"Sorry," his father said, waving a hand back and forth between them. His voice cracked as if he were crying, though Sherlock had not yet gathered the courage to look him in the eyes. Instead, he stayed trained on the gun, worried that one wrong move might set him off. "It's for my own protection."
"Your protection?" Sherlock asked. His protection? He was the liar! The one who either killed or kidnapped his sister. And he was afraid of Sherlock?
He hated how his own voice cracked, how weak he sounded.
"Exhuming your sister's body—" he pointed to the shovel in Sherlock's hands, "hardly rational, is it?" The hand not holding the gun motioned to his head, as if it were obvious something wasn't right in Sherlock's mind.
Sherlock lifted the shovel, though he didn't know what he would do with it. He couldn't hit his father, no matter what he had said or done. It was his father. But he was still angry, still needed this energy to go somewhere. "No don't, don't try to make it out like I'm the dangerous one!"
"I always feared this day would come," his father said.
"That I would find out?" Sherlock spat back.
"That you would show signs of your mother's affliction." Again, with that hand gesture, the one Sherlock had seen people do when speaking of his mother for years. At the asylum, at school, even his own father now.
"Is my sister still alive?" Sherlock asked. Because that was the only thing that mattered. Fuck whatever his father thought about him.
"Oh, Sherlock, for God's sake," he said. Almost like when Sherlock had been a child and done something especially stupid or risky, like jumping off a horse or grabbing a snake in the garden.
"Cause it's not her in the grave, it's not her body!" Sherlock insisted, pointing again with his shovel. He could tell his voice was rising, slowly taking on that manic tone that his father had so disapproved of when he was young. Maybe it was because of his mother's nature or maybe it was just a parent's role to play with their children, but his father had always hated when he sounded so… passionate.
Crazed, the unhelpful part of his own brain told him.
"Of course it is," his father pleaded.
"No it's not, her arm was broken!" he screamed. He needed to get these words out, to pry them free before they exploded out of him and did something he would regret. "That arm's not broken!"
"Y-you're misremembering," his father said, shaking his head.
Beatrice flashed across his mind. With a sling, without a sling. Her pretty yellow dress she had insisted on wearing out into the warm spring day. Her long, brown hair pulled back out of her face because she couldn't pull it back herself with her arm in a sling.
"I-it was in a sling, it was, I remember it!" Sherlock screamed. He didn't care how broken he sounded now, because this was one of the few things he could recall correctly about that day. The way his sister had looked right before she disappeared. Even her body when she came back that night had had a sling. Though, he had seen her only from a distance…
"Yes, yes it was," his father said. Admitting it. Yet he didn't look happy or caught, like Sherlock had imagined he would. He just looked… heartbroken. Much like he had when Bea had first been carried home.
"Because she had sprained her arm," he said. His hand reached out to grab the edge of the shovel, slowly lowering it down. "Falling from a tree, trying to climb after you, trying to keep up after you." His father sat down on the bench next to the table, his eyes filled with tears. "No wonder you blocked it from your memory. I understand how desperately you want to believe that she's still alive—"
Sherlock swiped the tears from his face, trying to pretend it was rainwater. "I know about yo—your failed businesses. An-and how your fortunes changed when mother was sent away, explain that!"
"You know why my business went under? Because I was here, looking after your mother. She wasn't well, Sherlock, long before Beatrice died. And after she went away, I buried myself in work, my fortunes improved, there is nothing sinister about that."
Was that true? Sherlock couldn't remember his mother being unwell before Bea died, but then again, it was hard to remember much before she died at all. He'd been so young, and most of his life had become divided into Before and After that he wasn't really sure where things fell anymore.
"Only two people saw the body," he said. "O-only you and the groundskeeper."
"Now that is simply untrue. The doctor, he issued a death certificate, he saw her, I can't believe we're even having this conversation—" His father tried to weasel out.
"A doctor who didn't even know what Beatrice looked like."
"Enough, I've been more than patient." His father said, sitting down in the chair and refusing to look at him. As if it were Sherlock who had committed some sort of atrocity and not him.
Sure, Sherlock had dug up Beatrice's grave, but that was not Beatrice.
Right?
"Why would you bring a doctor all the way from Oxford?" Sherlock asked, gesturing with the shovel from point A to point B.
His father exploded. He jumped up from the chair, his face red and his voice raised in a way Sherlock had never seen before. "That was your mother's idea! She was an old friend of his. He was an old friend of hers. She wanted him to be here!" He approached him quickly, though Sherlock didn't know why. There was no need to get so close as long as he had the gun. He could threaten, kill, and make his point without doing so.
Unless he didn't want to use the gun. Unless he was genuinely scared of Sherlock, worried that he had finally snapped and lost his mind.
Just like his mother.
"No," Sherlock whispered. He and James had done the research, they had investigated! It didn't make sense. His mother had never mentioned having a doctor friend in Oxford before, nor could Sherlock remember meeting one around the time of Beatrice's death.
Then again, most of the time after her death was a blur. With his mother too distraught to do anything and his father planning the funeral, Mycroft had immediately stepped into the role of making sure Sherlock was taken care of and out of the adult's way.
Was it possible he had met a man by that description and simply couldn't remember?
But what about paying off the ground keeper's debts? If it had nothing to do with Beatrice's death, then why do it?
Because your father had just lost a child, his mind whispered. And the grounds keeper had a daughter her age. If his fortunes had turned around, maybe he had wanted to do the same for a man who still had his daughter?
But…
But what?
So what if he and James had uncovered a secret his father had kept hidden? That he hadn't been as well off as Sherlock had been led to believe as a child? That he used the doctor his wife preferred in her moment of grief? That he had shown kindness to the man who found Bea's body by forgiving his debts?
But the body. It wasn't hers. He'd seen the sling, could picture it clearly now…
Which she could have been wearing for a sprain, too.
Fuck.
"Listen to me," his father said, gripping his arm.
Sherlock couldn't hold back his sobs. God had he fucked up. He'd broken his mother out of the asylum, had gotten her whipped up over Beatrice again, had dug up his sister's grave over this.
God, he was going to be sick.
That insistent hand pulled him closer. He didn't even care that his father had the gun now, because he should. He should have something to protect himself, because it was clear that Sherlock was dangerous.
"Sherlock, listen. It was the worst day of our lives." He leaned his head against Sherlock's, and no matter how hard he tried to push against him it didn't matter. His father stayed right there, a steady hand on the side of his face, his neck, directing him to follow him down to the table's bench.
"Of course you find it confusing. D-do you really find me capable of something so heinous?" his father asked, his voice full of tears.
"I'm sorry," Sherlock said, unable to stop crying now.
"Imagination can be a curse," his father said, as if he knew. As if he understood all too well exactly how his mind worked.
Perhaps he did. His father had been married to his mother for years now, and it was clear he had a lot of experience with unstable people. If anyone were a reliable source on such a thing, it would likely be him. And possibly Mycroft, but he wasn't here at the moment.
"There, there, my boy," his father said, brushing the tears from his cheek. "I understand, this is a difficult situation. But your mother she, well, she's very unwell. And I always feared that—" He cut himself off as he brushed a hand against Sherlock's cheek again. "Well, you do have such an active imagination."
Yes, Sherlock supposed he did. But there was nothing new about his imagination. Mycroft had often grumbled about it when they were children, telling him it was going to get him into trouble if he kept at it.
Somehow, he had a feeling this was not what Mycroft had meant.
"I—" Sherlock choked, somewhere between a cough and a sob.
"Here," his father said, sliding a glass into his hands. "Drink."
Sherlock did as he was told. There was something bitter to it, so unlike the drinks he and his mother had prepared earlier, but then again he wasn't sure he could trust his mind. His memories.
And if he couldn't trust those, where did that leave him?
"You have a brilliant mind. I always said that," his father said, as if he had heard his thoughts. "But there's a cost to brilliance."
What was worth this? The fear of losing himself, of not knowing what was true? What good was a nearly perfect recall if he couldn't trust that he was remembering them correctly?
Bea's arm had been broken. It had been in a sling, he remembered because she had complained about it preventing her from properly playing in the water.
Or had it been? It could have been sprained, he supposed. It wasn't as if he had ever seen the arm break. He'd only seen her after she had been setup by the doctor.
The room seemed to sway in front of him. His hands, previously numb from the cold rainwater, tingled uncomfortably. Against his will, his body sagged further into his father's chest like an anchor at port.
In fact, everything seemed to be going numb. His hands, his arms, his legs. Cotton filled his mind, softening and muffling everything as he tried to force his brain to focus.
Had the lights always been so bright? No, they hadn't, he knew. They'd been rather dim when he walked in, dim enough that he almost hadn't noticed his father's gun at first.
Yet another thing he couldn't trust his mind with.
"Father?" he asked, stumbling over the word. The glass slipped from his fingers and shattered against the stone floor, spilling the remaining water across the kitchen. It blended with the rainwater he had tracked in and fell in between the cracks in the floor.
"Shh," his father said as he patted the back of his head. It had been so long since his father had comforted him like this, with all consuming concern as he sobbed. "Here we go, up you get."
His father's arms wrapped around him, pulling him up. Still, his legs refused to cooperate with them. Long limbs combined with little control led to him and his father bumping into multiple surfaces on their way to where ever he was directing him.
"I can't— I can't think," Sherlock muttered. His tongue felt thicker than his thoughts, and he knew there was a reason he shouldn't go with his father, but he couldn't possibly remember why.
Where had his shovel gone? He'd had it before but…
"You don't need any of that, now," his father said. "You're confused, but that's alright. We're going to get you help."
Help. Right, there was something about that word. Help.
Did he need help? His uncooperative body told him that was likely it, but it didn't feel right.
No, he was supposed to be helping someone.
"Here, just lie down," his father said, easing him down to what seemed to be a sofa. A hand ran through his hair, brushing the wet locks back out of his face.
His father lingered just above him, a faint smile plastered onto his face. It reminded Sherlock of being a child, more specifically of the time he had fallen off a horse and hit his head on a rock. When Sherlock woke up, his father and their family doctor had been leaning over him, concerned but reassuring.
Apparently, Mycroft had carried him all the way home, unable to put him back up on his horse. He and Bea had teased him later over the fact that he had cried, and Mycroft had refused to play with them for a whole week after.
That was how Sherlock remembered it, anyways. Who knew what the truth was.
He tried to follow that memory, to see what happened after that, but he couldn't. Everything was hazy. Even breathing seemed like a struggle now.
"Rest," his father said, moving his hands over his eyes as if to shut them.
He tried to move, to reach out to him, but he couldn't Everything seemed to be so far away, but that didn't stop him from screwing up all of this strength to throw himself off of the sofa.
The last thing Sherlock heard was someone screaming his name.