Detective Inspector G. Lestrade (greglestrade) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2013-09-08 19:02:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ~25 points, ~~greg lestrade (greglestrade), ~~sherlock holmes (curiouscase) |
WHO Greg Lestrade & Sherlock Holmes
WHAT A bit not dead
WHEN Sunday
WHERE The streets of Madison
STATUS Closed - Ongoing in Gdocs, will be updated
After three days, Lestrade was starting to admit to himself that what was happening had to be a bit more than just a bad dream. It still felt a bit too strange to think seriously about the fact he’d been impossibly transported from London to Madison, Indiana and trapped in a small town for what seemed to be no reason. He’d tried to call home even after he learned he couldn’t, he tried to wake himself up, to wait out what was happening, or maybe even to sleep it off -- but the hours kept passing and nothing seemed to be happening. Half a week was about as long as he was able to go, living off supplies he’d picked out of the shop at the corner of his street. It was time to venture out and find something else to eat, explore the city and maybe even experience the hard limits at the edges of town for himself.
He even had a half-formed idea to talk to local law enforcement and see what they knew and what they might be willing to tell someone like him, with his background, that they’d kept from other people. Really, he was just looking for something that would help what was happening make a little bit more sense. He didn’t think that was asking too much. His only hope was that there was at least a bit more sense to be had.
Armed with the trenchcoat he’d come in, his wallet and a bag that he still stuffed into his pocket out of habit (his gun he’d surrendered on arrival, something he’d done almost on reflex and something he’d regretted since) and set off to get a better sense of how the city worked and how far he was from the police station.
His walk took a turn towards leisurely about ten minutes in, and while he located the few necessary landmarks he’d set out to find, something stopped him from venturing in to buy groceries or bother police officers. It was almost as though doing either meant admitting that all of this was real and he wasn’t sure he was ready to do that completely just yet. He’d gotten half-way there, gathering the evidence and deciding what his next steps needed to be, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to commit to an idea that still seemed so impossible. Part of that was, probably, made a little worse by the fact he wasn’t talking to anyone. He’d read a few things on the strange refugee network that had been set up, but for the most part everything went ignored in favour of his own theories and his own commitment to disbelief.
Lestrade roamed past a few stores, glimpsing at what they sold as he passed and paying little attention to where he was going until a glance ahead catch sight of a very familiar figure in a more familiar greatcoat disappearing around the corner of a building about half a block ahead. He frowned as a stab of adrenaline hit the centre of his chest. This was not the first time he’d thought he’d seen Sherlock Holmes. Since the man’s death, more than once, he’d have sworn he’d spotted Holmes in a crowd or skulking in the distance. He’d figured his eyes were playing tricks or that this was all the result of some part of his mind that wouldn’t accept the fact Sherlock had killed himself, but all of that was too psychological for his likely, and his career was too shaken up for him to feel as though he could mention what he’d seen to anyone without catching more of a hard time at work than he had already.
And now the wasn’t in London and there was less than half of a reason to assume that this time - this time - he’d really seen Sherlock. But then, some impossible things had been happening to him lately, so he didn’t even try to stop himself from starting into a jog to catch up with the man he’d just seen.
---
In a small town there was less to learn, strictly speaking, than in the Londons of the world. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t behind. Sherlock had spent most of the past few days silently trawling the internet for any answers he could find, and then, encountering nothing very satisfactory, had simply begun to familiarize himself with the territory. What he encountered while physically out and about was, as usual, vastly more intriguing and informative than the distorted representations of people and places he could access online, and while his tours might have looked aimless to anyone who happened to run into him, he was convinced he had a purpose. It was cartography, pure and simple.
Until an element of evasion introduced itself.
He’d seen Lestrade the day before. Unprepared either to give him an explanation or to cope with the unexpectedly intense wave of discomfort - was it regret? - washing over him at the sight of him, he’d retreated at once to muster an effective defense. Nothing had really presented itself; nothing aside from the truth. (And what, he asked himself, was wrong with the truth? Why couldn’t he summon the same cool energy that fueled all of his unfailingly confident explanations? How was this in any way different than just another case in which he connected the dots for his resident detective?) So he’d avoided him actively, keeping tabs as well as possible on his location, carefully building a plausible story for himself, as little as he thought he might ever use it.
In such an unfamiliar setting, though, he was bound to drop a few threads. Thus he found himself stopped one moment in front of a window to read a missing persons sign, and the next he was facing a slightly out-of-breath Lestrade, and there was no fleeing that. “Lestrade,” he said, injecting almost as much surprise as chariness. His hands immediately found his pockets. He was pleased to see him, deeply pleased, but he had no guarantees whatsoever that the feeling would be reciprocated.
---
Being pleased or not pleased had not get registered with Lestrade. He’d tried with only marginal success to wrap his head about the impossibility of being in this place and drawing up nothing but a blank as to why it was he was here at all, but standing before Sherlock Holmes proved, at once, to just be too much.
Lestrade stared at him, taking in the cold blue of his eyes, their diamond-like sharpness, his sculpted mouth, and the white arch of his throat. This wasn’t the first time his eyes had lingered just a bit too long on Sherlock’s face, but this was perhaps the most innocently he’d ever admired him. Those other times, when Holmes was bent, examining that which seemed to be nothing, that which at once became a case-solving clue, Lestrade had watched him and let his mind wander to certain impulses and urges he’d long buried beneath a respectable career and a dysfunctional marriage. He’d always felt a bit guilty, thinking as he did about a friend that he’d known so long, but it wasn’t as though he could help it, not really.
Now, though, was different. Now he didn’t trust his senses an inch and when he reached out to put a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder he did so only to confirm what he was seeing. He slid his palm down the surface Sherlock’s coat, resting his grip just above the other man’s elbow.
“How?” What else was there to say? He wasn’t only searching for an answer as to why Sherlock wasn’t dead -- but why they were here. Holmes was, after all, the man he’d always gone to for solutions to the impossible and he’d never failed. He had to be able to say something about all this -- about himself -- that would relax the pressing tension between Greg’s shoulders and help him to understand.
---
“Insufficiently specific,” Sherlock said, terse but uncharacteristically soft, almost kind, as he shook his arm gently out of Lestrade’s grip and took his elbow in turn, directing him further down the street. He rarely paused to consider the incongruity of any aspect of his personal relationships, but there were moments - like this one - with Lestrade in which it was uncomfortably, almost painfully clear that the upper hand could pass between them in the blink of an eye. For long swaths of time it had been Lestrade standing taller, hauling him out of the proverbial gutter; these days, it was more often Sherlock charging ahead and dragging everyone else impatiently behind him. It felt very natural to spoon-feed his detective answers, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t feel, at times, a little backwards.
He walked in stride with him, with no plans as to where to stop. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t. He was nervous. He preferred to move. “If you mean, ‘how did we get here,’ I haven’t decided yet.” Not I don’t know - never that. “If you mean, ‘how are you alive,’ it’s a much simpler answer. I faked my own death, of course - I’m sure you considered as much, after examining the scene.” He turned and for a few paces walked backwards, facing Lestrade and speaking with his usual blend of rushed carelessness and restive intensity. “I didn’t expend much effort in making it realistic, certainly not good enough to stand up to a thorough enquiry. I expect that was the most confusing part - your investigation must have led you to believe I was indeed alive, and had in fact not gone very far. I didn’t intend to. It was my intention to resurface immediately, once I had assured myself that Moriarty’s guns were no longer a threat.” He turned again, narrowly dodging the first other pedestrian he’d seen in about five minutes. Some luck. He threaded his arm through Lestrade’s and turned him sharply down an arbitrary side street, as quickly as though he had some idea of where he was going, which he didn’t. “After which, of course, it was my intention to apply myself to ensuring that the rest of Moriarty’s operations were dismantled as quickly as possible - you haven’t a clue how widely spread they are, you really don’t - but I had failed to appreciate just how deeply wrapped up with MI5 he was. It was stupid, really. I have no excuse other than that I was distracted. But nevertheless - Mycroft, whose help I needed to pass off my ‘suicide,’ knew precisely what my plans were. Naturally, he couldn’t afford for me to air all of his professional humiliations by tearing apart the criminal empire that formed - still forms, I suppose - about a quarter of his daily business, and not an insubstantial number of his agents. And so he shipped me off to Finland, where he could have his goons sit on me. - And not nice Finland, either. I thought about throwing myself off a roof for keeps about once a week.”
And that was that. For a spur-of-the-moment story he thought it rather solid. He shrugged, turned his face up to the setting sun, and squinted slightly. “And now I’m in Indiana. Hardly an improvement. But you, you’re looking well enough. Good for you.”
---
Lestrade’s first decision was to stop walking, he firmly planting his feet and held Sherlock’s arm with his to make sure the detective didn’t think to keep moving. He had to stop, because between Sherlock’s flutter of words and face-pace, he actually felt like he was being spun around or -- more specifically -- misdirected and it wasn’t a feeling he liked much. In recent years, Sherlock was more effective to him than a torch when it came to illuminating the dark avenues of case or criminal, but there was a time before all that when Holmes did lie to him, and this was what that looked like. But in that flurry of compliments, explanations and the passing of blame, there was, at the very least, exactly what Lestrade wanted to hear: Sherlock wasn’t dead, the suicide had been faked, he was all right and Moriarty was, basically, behind all of it. That was good enough, it would have been good enough if they’d both been in London and it was, really, better than good enough in face of these, more pressing circumstances-- they were in Indiana, for Christ’s sake.
So Greg settled on a moment of silence and a sceptical look. He wasn’t about to accept Sherlock believing that he’d entirely swallowed that story without question, but was happy to leave it. Whatever had really happened, it wasn’t going to register as important until after they figured out (or Sherlock ‘decided’, rather) what in the hell was going on. And, the more he thought about it the more he realised that there were even fewer reasons to get into the fact that Lestrade hadn’t really been allowed near the investigation surrounding Sherlock, that he’d been suspended, that there were plenty of questions left unanswered and a lingering pain that no explanation could make up for. But blaming Mycroft was a convenient enough solution for the moment that he felt he might as well.
The Detective Inspector leaned towards Holmes, pressing their shoulders together and casting his eyes towards the ground as he tried to decide what he wanted to say. He’d already ruled out talking about himself, there was no way he could bring up what happened to his career or his personal life without sounding defensive, even if it was true. Too many years in a bad marriage had taught him that guilt helped little when it came to solving problems. Sherlock, and Sherlock’s well-being was now, as he’d been since they’d first met and Greg had recognised Holmes’ difficulties, a priority for Lestrade, So he asked the only question he could and, really, the one he might as well have asked in the first place.
“But you are all right?” His hand moved around Sherlock, resting against the curve of the detective’s spine.