#odd how sherlock has made a lot of errors when it comes to john

[hazel-callahan]

the most beautiful kind of hypocrisy

[autolenaphilia]

My thoughts on the 1989-2010 BBC Radio Drama adaptation of Sherlock Holmes with Clive Merrison

Michael Williams and Clive Merrison

The Sherlock Holmes BBC radio drama series starring Clive Merrison is known to be the first adaptation to adapt every canonical story. It is also in my opinion, the best adaptation.

But let’s start with the basic facts of this radio series. There were technically two series of Holmes adaptations, both starring Clive Merrison as Holmes.

The first was the complete adaptation of all 60 of the canonical stories. They were broadcast from 1989 to 1998. They starred Michael Williams as Doctor Watson. They were made in two formats. The short story adaptations were about 45 minutes long, and were broadcast from 1990 to 1995 in the order the original stories are in the book collections (probably the first adaptation to be that systematic about it, earlier adaptations did them out of order). Each adaptation of the four longer stories are in two parts, each one hour long. The first two novels were first broadcast in 1989, the latter two in 1997 and 1998.

The 45 minute format for the short stories matter because while Holmes has often been adapted to radio before this BBC series, it had seldom or perhaps even never had a regular series of this length. Most adaptations for radio of the stories until that point were just 30 minutes long. That was what Rathbone and Bruce had to work with in their radio series (even less actually due to the commercials), and also that was the episode length of the Gielgud/Richardson series and the Carleton Hobbs/Norman Shelley series. The 45 minute format meant that the stories had time to breathe but also meant that especially the shorter and simpler stories had to be expanded upon.

The adaptations are still largely faithful, the basic plot and characters of the original are still there in the radio dramas, but they all have extra scenes to work out in the 45 minute format.

This extra material is technically filler, but doesn’t feel like it. Instead of just taking up airtime, the writers actually try to add something to the canonical story being told. The radio plays dramatize what is only talked about in passing in the original, try to add emotional depth and motivations to characters, or even outright try to fix faults in the original story.

To name some examples, we get to hear the dramatic backstory actually be dramatized in “The Crooked Man”, Violet Smith gets to confront Carruthers about how he played cards for her in “The Solitary Cyclist”, a socially awkward Holmes tries to invite Watson to spend Christmas with him in “The Blue Carbuncle” and we learn who the mysterious Mrs Turner is in “A Scandal in Bohemia” (one of Conan Doyle’s many continuity errors, where he forgot Mrs Hudson’s name and called her Turner. This gets elegantly solved solved by making Ms Turner someone Mrs Hudson hired to fill in for her when Mrs Hudson was ill.)

The results are overall brilliant, thanks to the quality of writing. The adaptations of canonical material is generally well-done, with the expansion of the stories strengthening the episodes instead of just being filler. The writers varied over the series, even if the most prolific was Bert Coules, who wrote the scripts for all four of the novels and 24 of the short stories. Yet the radio series feels quite tonally coherent and the quality of the writing is overall high.

The adaptations of the great stories in the canon never let down their source material and are overall well-done. Practically all of my own personal favourites, like “The Copper Beeches”, “The Naval Treaty”, “Charles Augustus Milverton”, “The Bruce-Partington Plans” and “The Illustrious Client” (to just pick one from each collection, I have several more favourites of course), get solid adaptations.

The adapters are able to find the merits of even the odder stories in the canon and make good use of them in their adaptations. A good example is “The Engineer’s Thumb” (odd because Holmes and Watson largely don’t do anything and just listen to their clients story), which skilfully turns the suspense of the original story into suspenseful radio.

At its best, the radio dramas actually improve on the original story being adapted. “The Dying Detective” is not a bad story, but the radio drama is actually better. The original is a rather short story and there is a lot of extra story material needed to make it work as a 45 minute radio play. And the script by Robert Forrest uses all this free airtime to expand Culverton Smith’s character into something more complex. Here we get to hear scenes depicting the lead-up to his nephew’s murder, and Smith’s reasons for committing it. Smith is more sympathetic in this version, the nephew is depicted as a foolish rich racist snob, even if the flashbacks come from Smith’s own monologue, making him potentially an unreliable narrator. The expanded adaptation also gives Holmes more to do in his role as a dying and raving man, and Merrison makes the most out of it.

“His Last Bow” is another radio episode that improves on its source material. The original is a thin story, a simple propagandistic spy story notable really only for being Holmes and Watson’s final adventure in-universe.  The script for the radio adaptation makes it feel more epic by depicting the lead-up to the central scene in the original story in detail. It imagines Holmes’s personal reasons for retiring (something left unexplained in the canon) and makes Von Bork into a far more formidable foe worthy of Holmes’s attentions.

Probably the adaptation that most improves on its source material is probably “The Lion’s Mane”. If I would rank all the stories, I’m pretty sure “The Lion’s Mane” would end up towards the bottom, and I think most fans would agree with me about that. Yet the radio drama adapted from it is one of my favourites from the series. The adaptation radically re-imagines the story and is odd even by the series’s own standards.  The events of the original story are already past, with Holmes already having solved the mystery when the radio drama takes place. Instead it takes place when Watson later visits Holmes in his retirement. And during that visit, Holmes tells him about the mystery he experienced and invites Watson to solve it himself for fun. It has an odd structure for the series, where there is no supporting cast or characters, no dramatized flashbacks to the events being talked about, only Merrison’s Holmes and Williams’s Watson. The entire episode is a series of dialogues between the two. And it works wonderfully. The repartee and general chemistry between Holmes and Watson is one of the strengths of this radio series, and this episode is full of that.

Let’s talk about Holmes and Watson in this series.

Merrison has a remarkable resemblance to Sidney Paget’s conception of Holmes

Clive Merrison’s Holmes is outstanding. It is a performance filled with manic energy, eccentricity and theatrical flair. Holmes is energetic when interested, bored with life when he can’t divert himself. Occasionally rude (especially against the upper class) and socially awkward, he also is capable of great kindness, has a drive for justice and a close friendship with Watson. If this description sounds exactly like the Holmes of canon, it is because Merrison’s Holmes is exceptionally true to the text. It is a great voice actor doing his utmost to bring the Holmes of the page to life using his voice. It is an immense achievement and Merrison is my favourite Holmes. Whenever I imagine Holmes’s voice, it is Merrison I hear.

Michael Williams played Watson in all of the canonical adaptations, and he is equally great. Watson is an equal partner in these adaptations, not any kind of comic relief side-kick and Williams plays him accordingly. Williams’s Watson is a strong, intelligent, courageous and warm-hearted man. He is the embodiment of Victorian virtues, the “normal” antipole to Holmes’s eccentricity.

He is tolerant, yet naturally exasperated with Holmes sometimes. Watson often verbally spars with Holmes, with them bickering with each other like an old married couple. Yet there is always a strong sense of the love, friendship and undying loyalty in their relationship. Again, if Williams’s Watson sounds like the canonical Watson it is because he basically is. It is a great performance, and like with Merrison and Holmes, Williams’s warm voice is what I imagine the character of Watson to sound like.

Merrison and Williams are the only constants in the series, but they are far from the only good actors. The acting in this series is of the highest quality all the way through.

Recurring characters are sometimes re-cast but it seldom proves jarring. John Hartley is a good Myrcroft, very soft-spoken but sharply intelligent. Mrs Hudson is sadly under-used, but played very well by Joan Matheson especially (Matheson was the most frequent but not the only Mrs Hudson). Judi Dench (who was married to Michael Williams) also appears in the role as a special guest in “The Hound of the Baskervilles”.

Unlike other adaptations, the radio series has the sense to not over-use Lestrade and they don’t put him in stories where he did not appear, instead having a variety of inspectors like in the canon. Still Donald Gee and Stephen Thorne both do an admirable job of portraying the police inspector.

Of course the Holmes stories are just as much about the people Holmes and Watson meet during their adventures as it is about them. There are many well-known actors which fill those roles like Brian Blessed and Denis Quilley, yet also relatively unknown actors like Imogen Stubbs. The quality of the acting however never wavers and is overall very fine indeed.

The quality of the acting attests to the overall high production quality of this radio series. The direction, largely by Patrick Rayner and Enyd Williams who between them directed and produced most of the series, is excellent.

The sound design and effects are very well-made, and create the kind of convincing atmosphere that great audio drama is so good at. I forget that I’m listening to actors in a studio, and instead get a vivid impression of the environments they are in through the sound design.

The result is perhaps the greatest of the many Sherlock Holmes adaptations. It is the first to adapt every story, but the radio series is not just complete, the quality of the adaptations in writing, acting and production is excellent.

If any adaptation is definitive, this radio series is it. I love and respect the Granada series, but the BBC radio series is more consistent in quality and did actually finish adapting the entire canon. The only reason it isn’t more well-known I suspect is the popular prejudice against audio drama as a medium. Audio drama is seen as outdated and suffers from invisibility compared to tv and film. It is an unfair prejudice and the BBC radio Holmes adaptations is more than proof of that.

After the entire canon was adapted, the popularity of the shows led to the decision to continue the series with original scripts, all written by Bert Coules. This new series was called “The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”.

It consists of 16 episodes, all around 45 minutes long, and aired in four series from 2002 to 2010. The final series was one story in two parts as a grand finale for the whole venture, making 15 stories overall.

Clive Merrison continued to star as Holmes, but the unfortunate death of Michael Williams after he had finished the complete adaptation of the canon led to the role of Watson having to be re-cast.

  Andrew Sachs and Clive Merrison

The new Watson for “The Further Adventures is Andrew Sachs. Most well-know for playing Manuel in Fawlty Towers, he had an extensive career in radio drama and appeared previously on the show playing the King in “A Scandal in Bohemia”.

Hearing Merrison as Holmes with Sachs as Watson is admittedly a bit jarring at first after being so used to Williams’s portrayal. But I soon got used to him and the fine qualities of the performance became evident. This Watson is similar to Williams’s Watson in his intelligence, capabilities and compassion. The most evident change is that Sachs’s Watson is more soft-spoken. This changes the tone of the dialogue between Holmes and Watson, with Watson less often directly expressing anger and indicating his disagreements through subtle uses of wit and sarcasm. Yet the love and loyalty of the relationship between Holmes and Watson is still very much evident. The “old married couple who bicker but love each other” feel of their relationship is perhaps even stronger in their arguments now, with Watson almost literally going “yes, dear” in response to Holmes’s outlandish actions. It is an excellent performance.

The new stories written by Coules are based on references to untold stories in the canon. We get to learn about Colonel Warburton’s madness, the peculiar prosecution of John Vincent Harden, the Abergavenny murder, who “Merridew of abominable memory” was, and in the finale, “the whole story concerning the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant“.

The scripts are in general very good and present several enjoyable mysteries with strong characterizations. Some of my favourites are “The Singular Inheritance of Gloria Wilson”, “The Abergavenny Murder” and “The Remarkable performance of Frederick Merridew”. There are some lighter episodes, but the tone overall is noticeably dark, with Coules having the goal of exploring subjects that Conan Doyle wouldn’t because of the time he was writing in. We thus get episodes involving child murder and suicide.

The new episodes feel like a natural continuation of the early canon adaptations. The style is of course not a direct pastiche of the canon, but rather of the earlier BBC radio adaptations of the canon.

This form of auto-pastiche succeeds thanks to the production values being of the same high standard as before. Patrick Rayner, one of the main director-producers of the original series of canon adaptations continues his work here as the sole director-producer with similar great results. The sound effects and design are just as immersive in this series.

The acting is once again superb. Merrison continues his great performance as Holmes and Sachs is an excellent replacement for Michael Williams. The supporting cast is made-up of the same high quality actors as before, with famous names like Tom Baker and Toyah Wilcox having guest star roles.

“The Further Adventures” is overall a worthy continuation of the BBC’s adaptations of the Holmes canon. The high standards of the original series in writing, acting and direction are once again fulfilled and anyone who has enjoyed the canon adaptations and wanted more stories with Merrison as Holmes made by the BBC will probably be satisfied with “The Further Adventures”.

In particular, “The Marlbourne Point Mystery” is a worthy finale to the great undertaking that the BBC series starring Merrison has been. And the final scene, with Holmes and Watson reflecting on how Watson’s stories have made the two immortal is extremely moving.

I must also mention the book “221BBC” by Bert Coules, which is published by the Wessex Press and available from their website.  This book is a personal account of the making of the BBC series, with information on every episode Coules was involved in. The book is well-written and the anecdotes and information in it is highly interesting for any fan of this radio series. The book can be a bit pricy if international shipping is factored in, but very much worth it.

Other resources worth mentioning are the semi-official site about the series. There are also some podcast interviews of people involved that are well worth hearing, like The I Hear of Sherlock everywhere podcast interviews with Bert Coules and Clive Merrison. Coules has also appeared on the Baker Street Babes podcast.

The radio series can fairly easily be found online, both legally and otherwise. And if my fan-girly ramblings haven’t made it totally clear, I fully recommend you to listen to it if you have any interest at all in Sherlock Holmes.

[zugzwanggin-blog]

Amo, Amas, Amat

OR: WHY MARY ISN’T THE DEVIL YOU GUYS COME ON, MOFTISS WRITES BETTER CHARACTERS THAN THAT, AND JOHN ISN’T A PERFECT HUMAN BEING HE NEEDS TIME TO GRIEVE, THE JOHNLOCK IS CANON AND IT’S COMING

Everyone is so determined to turn Mary into this conniving, evil, backstabbing criminal mastermind whose sole purpose in life is to make John miserable and come as a wedge between him and Sherlock. But she’s...not.

She’s a good fucking character. She was a freelance assassin, a mercenary, part of a team. She’s not Sebastian Moran. There’s still a chance she is somehow connected to Moriarty, but honestly? That isn’t his style. Moriarty was a genuine sociopath--he was so far gone, in fact, that interacting with him was what made Sherlock realize he wasn’t sociopathic after all. Moriarty doesn’t understand the nuances of love and self-sacrifice and sentiment. He sees them, he makes use of them, but he isn’t--wasn’t--the type to manipulate them in such clever and intricate and prescient ways. He arranged terrorist attacks and murders and assassinations, he dealt drugs and arms, he strapped semtex to the only person Sherlock cared about just to bully and frighten him and to empower himself. I’m not saying that arranging three assassins and then shooting himself on a rooftop was his coup d'etat, obviously he’s still got his fingers in a few pies, but Mary wasn’t one of them.

Mary was an assassin whose professional life went to shit. She started over. She met John. John’s a good bloke. John’s a fantastic bloke. John is steady, and clever, and understanding, and loyal, and sardonic. John has been hurt deeply. John does not hurt in retaliation. John absorbs. John cares and comforts. John patches you up, and he doesn’t judge you in the process. John is exactly who she needed. She fell in love with John. And John fell in love with her.

No, I don’t think it’s the same as the way he loves Sherlock. He and Sherlock have been through too much, have bonded too irreparably, have insinuated themselves together too irrevocably for a woman to come between them. (And honestly guys? Using a woman just to come between the two main male characters is such an overused trope, and I really think Moffat and Gatiss are more clever and self-aware than that.) They loved one another. Even Sherlock could see it, could respect it. For the longest time I thought he was just blindly keeping Mary safe in order to protect John and John’s happiness by proxy, but TST showed us otherwise. Sherlock cared for her as well. He called her a friend, he showed baby pictures to his brother, he made that vow and he really, really meant it.

When John found out about AGRA he meant it when he said he was determined to move on. And he tried. He did. But he has trust issues, remember? John has trust issues. These have been built up slowly, added to bit by bit, over a lifetime. I personally believe his mother was his rock, and she is canonically dead. He has trust issues with his sister, who he deems unreliable. I’m sure he has trust issues with his father, who he has never once mentioned. He has trust issues with the military, who kicked him out and now ridicules him for his life choices. He has trust issues with his own body, which betrayed him and his chosen profession--a surgeon who can’t even operate? How pathetic. He has trust issues with Sherlock, who killed himself in front of John and then reappeared. He has trust issues with his wife, who pretended to be a woman she wasn’t, and lied to his face, repeatedly. John has some fucking trust issues, okay? And they’re not minor. He has gone out of his way to be everyone’s rock, they even went out of their way to point it out in TST. But you know what? Rocks are strong, but they’re not shatter-proof. Rocks can still fucking break.

He tried to make it work with Mary, genuinely, but the trust was gone. They co-parented, they cooperated, they co-sleuthed and cohabited and co-everything the way couples do, and it was genuine. They both cared. They both put forth the effort. Neither was pretending. But the trust was gone, for John. Because John has trust issues.

Yes, he looked. A pretty young bird on the bus noticed him, and he looked. And he chatted. And he probably had coffee. Did he sleep with her? Maybe. I really don’t think so, but it’s possible. I think he’d have been a little more hesitant to bring it up if he had. But he thought about it. He was tempted. And John is loyal. The temptation was bad enough for him to want to come clean. I thought it was odd at first, but the more I look back at it the more I understand his point of view. He doesn’t feel completely comfortable in his relationship with Mary anymore. He doesn’t feel completely devoted to her like he might have done if she hadn’t turned out to be, you know, a killer--but also a liar, first of all. And that said, I feel there’s a lot to be said for the fact that there’s a lot of shit between Sherlock and John, but the one thing that isn’t there is lying. Not big things--little things like whether or not Sherlock really is responsible for swapping the milk out with horse semen is on another scale entirely, and John actually appreciates those sorts of deer-in-the-headlights obvious fibs.

When Sherlock finds the second USB, he goes straight to John. Before he confronts Mary, before he does anything else, he takes it to John. And you know what? John was suspicious enough to say “Hey Sherlock, maybe we’d better bug the device in case my wife who I love and trust so much makes off with it and tries to run from us, ‘cause that’s what loving, trusting couples do, that.” And the same thing happened in HLV when Sherlock revealed Mary to John. Sherlock has, I believe, actually learned his lesson when it comes to trusting John--he has not once kept John purposely in the dark just to save him from something, not once since TRF, not once since he returned and learned how badly he’d hurt John by lying to him, even if it was just to keep him safe. And now he’s learned another lesson about humility, much as it pains him--but the most painful lessons are the stickiest, aren’t they? John and Sherlock are tighter than ever. Sherlock has made that final leap off the edge, and now goes to John for everything. It’s John’s turn to do the same.

Does he blame Sherlock for Mary’s death? Of course he does. Sherlock made a vow, and he needs to blame someone. He also blames himself. He blames everyone. Life isn’t fucking fair, and it’s been especially unfair to John. Everything he’s tried to build for himself has been broken. Do you understand that? Review it, and really, really let it sink in for a moment:

He tried to be a doctor, he tried to save people, he went to war for it. He joined the Army. He was deployed to Afghanistan for three years. Then he got shot. In his dominant arm. No more military, they tossed him out like a useless sack of spoiled potatoes, as all militaries are wont to do once you’ve outlived your usefulness to them. No more surgery, his left hand sustained so much nerve and tissue and bone damage that he can no longer operate safely. All of those years of training and sacrifice, gone. Unappreciated. And now he’s left fucking useless and unwanted. He was even contemplating suicide before he met Sherlock. Our Mr. Strong Rock Who Can Weather Any Storm was ready to end it because he felt so useless and pathetic and lonely and all of those other horrible emotions that make up depression. He made a good go of it in life, and look where it got him. Abso fucking lutely nowhere. And no one cared.

Speculation, but I suspect he tried to save his sister. I suspect he spent much of his younger years trying to be there for her, to give her alternatives to the alcohol, to be there as he rock and her trustee and her caretaker, and he failed. And now, as adults, their relationship is so fractured that his own sister was a no-call no-show for John’s wedding. He tried to be there for his family, and they have proven themselves to be unreliable to him. Not even touching on his father just because John has never mentioned him, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me that he was likely an alcoholic (as in Doyle’s canon) and perhaps even a little bit abusive--John brawls like he grew up brawling, that isn’t something you learn in the Army, trust me I’m an Army veteran myself. So yeah, that didn’t exactly work out for him either, did it?

He attached himself to Sherlock. He moved into a flat with Sherlock, went out on cases with him, to crime scenes, chased murderers through the London streets, killed a man to save his life. Sherlock was his life. They were partners. Then Sherlock killed himself in front of John on a lark, and reappeared two years later as if it was all just a big joke. As if he hadn’t shattered everything John had just started to believe in again. That trust isn’t back yet. In fact, I would dare to suggest he threw himself so hard at Mary immediately after Sherlock returned in an effort to keep himself from becoming glued back to his side again. Once burned, twice shy. This will change eventually, because Sherlock has realized his error and is actually putting forth an effort to be there for John. That was the entirety of season 3. Season 4 will very likely be John coming to terms with his own shortcomings, and opening himself up to be there for Sherlock, despite the risks inherent in that trust. John has trust issues. John’s character arc will be learned how to let Sherlock in despite them.

He made a family with Mary. Who turned out not to be the woman he fell in love with, the woman he spent the last two years with. She was a stranger. All right. He accepted that and struggled to move on. And now Mary is dead. Everything John touches falls apart. I would not be surprised if he turns to drink. I hope not, because he has his daughter to look after and his sense of responsibility has always been just a hair stronger than his temptations, but I would not be surprised. I think this episode explains pretty well for itself how everything fell apart in their relationship. They were not a solid foundation. They crumbled. Mary sacrificed herself for John. She was not an idiot. She knew this was inevitable. John would get over her own death, eventually, with help. But she saw John after Sherlock’s, and she knew he wouldn’t survive that again--not after he’d just started to trust in Sherlock again.

So, John blames himself. For all of it. What’s the one common denominator in all of those events? John isn’t stupid. He’s a natural caretaker, and everyone he’s cared for has broken him. It’s his turn to be cared for. He cared for his sister, he cared for the soldiers in the RAMC, he cared for Sherlock, he cared for Mary. No one has stopped to care for him. He hasn’t let them. He doesn’t let them in. He needs to learn how to do this.

Mary died in his arms, and John still didn’t cry. Those sounds he made were horrific. He was trying so desperately hard not to cry. And now he’s flinging blame around, because that’s what hurting people do, especially, especially, especially especially especially especially especially when they blame themselves.

I keep seeing around on tumblr that Mary orchestrated this whole thing, that Moriarty is behind it after all, that John and Sherlock can’t repair their friendship over this, etc etc. No. Just, no. John needs time to grieve. And he needs someone to be there for him. And Sherlock will be there for him. He realized throughout season 3 that he wanted to be there for him. And now he’s trying so, so hard to be, in his own eccentric not really reliable but still genuine Sherlock way.

The Johnlock is canon. This is the conclusion to their arc. Sherlock has come around, and now it’s John’s turn. So much fanfic is about how broken Sherlock is, why he cut himself off from his emotions, what traumas he suffered to turn him into a “sociopathic” drug addict. So few are about why John is so drawn to him, why John needs violence and adrenaline to function, why John is so broken, why John can’t express himself or grieve or feel when his wife dies right there in his own fucking arms. That’s what this is about. I hope. Because if it isn’t I might die.

Also EEEEEEEEEEEE SHERRINFORD!!!!

/rant

[sparrowlina-blog]

A Rose By Any Other Name [Sherlock x OC] - Chapter 2

Chapter 1

“Everyone, this is—“

“Aryn K. Clarke,” Aryn finished, extending her hand towards Donovan, then Anderson.

“These two are my right hand people. If you need anything, they’ll help you tend to it,” Lestrade voluntold, guiding Aryn around the two after their introductions had been complete.

“You must be Dr. Watson,” Aryn started, shaking hands with John.

“Just ‘John’ please. Pleasure to meet you. Greg has told us so much about you,” John politely stated. This girl wasn’t what John was expecting. If he had to guess, she was around Sherlock’s age. Her hair was pulled back in a neat, professional way, and she had an aura about her. She was very polite, but he could tell she meant business and that this case was probably bothering her about as much as it bothered them.

“I hope he’s only told you good things,” she said with a laugh. “When I was first training in the force, Greg was the person I shadowed. When I moved out to Manchester, he kept pulling me back for cases.” Bringing her attention to Sherlock, she continued, “And I’m guessing this is the reason why he stopped calling.”

“Aryn, this is Sherlock Holmes.”

Lestrade was nervous about the exchange, as was everyone. Sherlock wasn’t known for making an exceptional first impression on people and seeing as how harsh he was about her earlier, no one knew what would come out of his mouth.

Aryn walked over to Sherlock and looked up at the detective. “Hello, Sherlock.”

His gaze was intense. It was as if he was frozen in shock or in fear. John had only seen him do this one other time: when he had asked Sherlock to be his best man. John knew that Sherlock’s mind was probably racing at a million miles a minute at that point. What John couldn’t figure out was why. He had been around a lot of other women before and even when he was around someone like Irene Adler, he was able to keep his composure. It did strike John as odd, though, that Aryn wasn’t so formal with Sherlock at their first meeting.

10 years of emotions and thoughts were indeed racing through Sherlock’s mind. As he looked at Aryn, he kept thinking “She hasn’t changed.”

“It’s about time you got here. Of all people I would expect that you should be able to help solve this. I hope your time is a DI hasn’t softened you. So tell me, what do you know?”

These are the words Sherlock thought came out of his mouth.

“I’ll go and get us all some coffee then,” Aryn awkwardly announced, walking past Sherlock and making a left down the hallway from which the group had just come.

John’s face was a mixed of confusion and amusement. He walked over to his friend who was still standing in the same position as he had been for the past five minutes. “Sherlock?” He snapped his fingers in front of his face. “Sherlock, you there?”

“Finally—someone’s able to shut him up,” Donovan remarked with a sense of satisfaction. She smirked as she walked past the duo. “Let’s see if she can keep this up,” she laughed as she left the room.

Anderson and Lestrade exchanged looks before following suit.

“Try to get to know her. She’ll probably be here a while so best to get used to how she works,” Lestrade informed John. He looked up to Sherlock again and shook his head. “And please make sure he doesn’t keep doing this. I don’t know if I’d rather have this over his usual…comments.”

John nodded with slight embarrassment as the DI left the room.

As if on cue, Sherlock looked up and around and noted that the room was now empty. “Well that was rude.”

John looked at Sherlock confused and asked, “How do you mean?”

Walking over to the boards, Sherlock continued, “I asked her a question and she completely ignored me.”

He smirked when he realized Sherlock’s blunder. “Sherlock, you didn’t ask her anything.”

It was now Sherlock’s turn to be confused. He turned around to look at John with a bewildered expression. “Didn’t I? I could have sworn that I—“

“You froze, Sherlock. One look at her and you went into shock.”

Looking down at the table in front of him, Sherlock tried to replay in his mind the last few minutes. “So I said—“

“Absolutely nothing,” John finished, crossing his arms in front of him in enjoyment. “How do you know her?”

Sherlock started to putter around the table, looking over the photographs in case there were new ones he wasn’t familiar with. “Know who?”

“Aryn.”

“What makes you think I know her?”

John walked around the table and placed his hand over a photograph Sherlock was looking over. Sherlock looked up at John with slight irritation while John returned the gaze with and expectant one.

Rolling his eyes and walking around John, Sherlock said, “She’s an old…friend. I suppose that’s what you’d call her,” as he waved his hand in the air as if trying to conjure up the right word.

“A friend? You?”

Sherlock shot John a look with narrowed eyes very briefly before leaving the room to return to Lestrade’s office.

John stood in slight disbelief as he started to take in what Sherlock had told him. It would be a situation to watch in the coming days, but for now he too went back to Lestrade’s office. There, he found Lestrade, Sherlock, and Aryn. Lestrade was on the phone, and his expression was grave.

“Alright, we’ll be there soon.” Lestrade hung up the phone and stood up quickly, walking towards his coat that he had draped on one of the chairs earlier in the day. “Another body.”

+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+

The building had been abandoned for many years, as far as Aryn could tell. The only people who moved in and out of it were those who had been going through the building’s contents to try and salvage whatever they could. The wallpapers inside were faded and peeling off of the walls. The floors were dust-covered, tiles were chipped, and the smell was overwhelmingly strong. It was as if someone had killed an animal and left it to rot.

“Victim is the wife of one of the men we found two weeks ago,” Lestrade explained. He, John, Sherlock, and Aryn had turned a few more corners as he began explaining. “When we had initially started to investigate the husband’s murder, we had put her in as a suspect.”

Aryn nodded. “Seems viable. Missing wife, dead husband—that’s a formula for a number one suspect.”

“Except that no one had heard from the wife in a while as well,” John added.

“And here we are,” Sherlock finally stated as the group reached the room that the body was in.

Donovan and Anderson had cleared all of the extra people away from the room as to give Sherlock, John, and Aryn the time and space they needed in order to work.

At first, Aryn didn’t move. She surveyed the room with great intensity, her eyes flicking from place to place, corner to corner. There wasn’t much to the room aside from the body and the rose that sat upon it. Given the smell and the rose’s now dead state, she guessed that the body had been there for quite some time. The room itself was quite dusty and didn’t have any furniture within it. There was a lone picture that hung above the fireplace that was directly across from the door. There were three windows that lined the wall to Aryn’s left that overlooked the street. Two windows to Aryn’s left led to a fire escape which would take a person down to the secluded alley between that building and the next.

Sherlock too stood and took in the room and its layout. In his mind he was going through each of the pictures of previous victims to see if there were any differences that he could see. At the moment, there were none. Squatting down, he took note of the floor.

Aryn did the same, scanning the floor near where the body was. Sherlock looked at her in slight surprise, but ignored the gesture and carried on.

“Were your men wearing shoe covers this time?” Sherlock asked, irritation lacing his voice. It was this particular error that had cost them a better scene analysis the last time they had a victim to look over.

“Yes they were,” Anderson answered, although Sherlock was expecting the answer out of Lestrade.

“Good.”

“So if we can find any shoe prints with clean marks,” Aryn began, turning to Anderson, “then we have something to go off of: shoe size, length of stride which can give us a guess on the killer’s height.”

Anderson looked from face to face with slight shock. “You can’t mean that you buy into what this guy is suggesting,” he said, gesturing towards Sherlock. “He’s psychotic.”

“Sociopath,” Sherlock corrected.

“I do ‘buy into’ what Sherlock is suggesting,” Aryn began, walking towards Anderson. “Now could you please take the photos we need so that we can get on with looking at the body?” She rolled her eyes as she looked at Lestrade desperate for answers and a better forensics team to work with. “Can we not do all of this ourselves?”

“I’ve been asking that since the day I met Anderson,” Sherlock mumbled to himself, inspecting the doorway as well as the hall they had just walked down.

“It’s never stopped you,” Lestrade snapped back, turning his attention back to the room.

John watched the banter that Sherlock and Aryn seemed to have, although it wasn’t with one another. They meshed because their thoughts were on the same wavelength. It was a strange feeling because, in reality, no one really thought on the same wavelength as Sherlock.

Again he found himself noting that she never referred to him as “Mr. Holmes” since Sherlock had never really told her to call him just “Sherlock”.

Lestrade found the exchange quite odd as well. “You two should be married or something. It’s scary the way you two think.”

The comment made both the younger detective inspector and the consulting detective cast glances at each other before they were interrupted by Anderson.

“Photos have been taken. The scene is yours to ruin.”

“Finally!” Sherlock exclaimed. It was as if he was a puppy that was let out into the yard to play. He went from place to place looking over a variety of details. Eventually he made his way to the body where John was already inspecting.

John knelt beside the body, gloves on his hands, and started to feel around the wound that was in the woman’s chest. It was the same as all of the others: very clean, very precise, very painful. Sighing, he began to inspect other parts, doing tasks such as looking at her fingernails and checking her pupils for any dilation. “Nothing out of the ordinary in terms of all of the victims. Same cause of death, just seems that this one was here for about 10 to 15 days.”

“Which is about how long the husband has been dead, right?” Aryn asked, kneeling next to John.

“Yeah, it’s been 13 days since we found the husband,” Lestrade confirmed, flipping through a small notebook that he carried with him that had information he needed. “Buy why no tip off this time?”

“It’s a mistake,” Sherlock quickly answered, walking over to John and Aryn.

“Mistake?” John asked.

“Yes, a mistake. There are several differences not only with the circumstances of this victim and the last but also the placement.”

“The rose isn’t in her hands, it’s cast off on her shoulder as if it’s been merely dropped,” Aryn began, now circling the body.

“Precisely. The killer took care with the first few victims. All of their bodies had been treated intimately, as if it were some kind of ritual,” Sherlock continued, not missing a beat.

“She’s missing her wedding ring which is odd since all of the other victims were found with all of their jewelry or expensive pieces still on them.”

“Judging by the lack of neatness in both her hair and her clothes, she was a rushed placement,” Sherlock noted. All of the other bodies had been well combed and their clothes looked as if they had been freshly pressed. This body was disheveled, as if it had just been brought out of the trunk of a car and placed on the floor.

“Seems as if she was an after-thought,” Aryn finished, looking around the room. “We’ll have to wait until Miss Hooper can take a better look at the body.” Not seeing any other differences aside from what she and Sherlock had found, she walked towards Lestrade and rubbed her face with her hands. “I suppose you can let the rest of the forensics team in here to see if they can find anything else.”

+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+

Upon returning to Scotland Yard, Aryn could feel that she was being watched with more intensity than when she had arrived that morning. Judging by the way Donovan and Anderson tag teamed against Sherlock, she felt she had a target on her back now as well. Not only that, but she knew that John was trying to put the pieces together in terms of everything that had happened that day. She didn’t blame him, though. It probably wasn’t every day that you could find someone who not only could come to conclusions like Sherlock but could also follow his thought patterns to a tee.

Then again, what they had figured out that day was minor and easy enough for anyone with a magnifying glass to deduce.

Returning to the original meeting room, Aryn began to gather her bags and folders while talking with Greg.

“Are you sure you’d rather stay in Manchester? Contrary to what you’d believe, we could use your help here at Scotland Yard.”

Aryn laughed. “Greg, I’m definitely a lot happier in Manchester. Why are you badgering me about this now? Feel like you’re getting too old for the job?” A playful stab. It wasn’t unlike her to tease Lestrade about his age. He was like a father to her and had always taken care of her as such. All of the shortcuts and tricks she knew about her job had come from him and she was very thankful for his guidance.

His smile was one of relief after the day they just had. “Once you settle in to your new flat, do you wanna grab a pint?”

“Only if you’re buying.”

“Don’t I always?”

Aryn smiled as she gathered the rest of her things and began to walk out of the office. Taking the elevator, she started to shuffle her bags inside and pressed the “1” button to go down to the first floor.

“Wait!” she heard a familiar voice call.

She held the elevator door button open, when she saw John jogging over, to allow him inside.

“Thanks,” he said between breaths.

“Not a problem.” She looked at him again in a bit more detail than before. He was a military man as far as she could tell. He was married and seemed to be a very nice guy. The fact that he was close with Sherlock was probably a good thing for the latter party. He needed someone more stable in his life considering how unstable he was able to get.

“How many months?” she randomly asked as the elevator doors closed.

“Sorry?” John looked up at her slightly confused by the question that had come out of nowhere.

“Oh, sorry,” she apologized with a smile. “How many months along is your wife? You are expecting a baby aren’t you?”

John smiled as he looked down at the ground. “Let me guess. Judging by my wedding ring, the bags under my eyes, and…?”

“…the fact that you were gazing into the shop windows next to the apartment we visited today, I figured you folks must be getting close. The pram you were looking at was nice. Probably costs a pretty penny as well.”

Laughing, John replied, “It’s amazing.”

“Babies? Oh yes. They’re the best part of the married life, or so I’m told.”

“No, no, not that. You.”

Aryn scrunched her eyebrows together as the elevator opened to the ground floor. “Me?”

Grabbing one of her bags, John walked Aryn through the lobby and out the door towards the street. “Yes you.”

“And why is that?”

“If you don’t mind me saying, I’m in slight disbelief in how you and Sherlock are so similar. Except…your deductions come out in a much nicer way.”

Aryn chuckled as she hailed a cab. “You’d be surprised at a lot of things, John.”

“Did you know Sherlock prior to today?”

She nodded as a cab finally pulled up to the curb. “We were…friends, I suppose.” There was hesitation in her voice that John recognized from when he had talked to Sherlock earlier.

He proceeded to load Aryn’s larger bag into the back of the cab and opened the door for her. “‘Were’?”

“Another story for another day John.” She smiled as tossed her other bag into the cab. “Thanks for helping me. Greg and I will be going out for a pint later if you and your wife want to join us. I’d love to meet her.”

John nodded as he watched Aryn climb into the cab. The dark vehicle pulled away from the curb, its red taillights fading into the distance.